BR 788 .S43 1881 
 
 The Scottish church from th( 
 earliest times to 1881 to 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES 
 
 FIRST SERIES .^^'^l^f}^ 
 %<^^.. . 
 
 THE 
 
 SCOTTISH CHURCH 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO iSSi 
 
 TO WHICH IS PREFIXED AN 
 
 • HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ST GILES' CATHEDRAL 
 
 BY W. CHAMBERS, LL.D. 
 
 W. & R. CHAMBERS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 1881 
 
Edinburgh : 
 Printed by W. & R. Chambers. 
 

 ,R£C. iAN 1E82 ' 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE; OGIG:^ - 
 
 The following Lectures were delivered in St Giles' Cathedral, 
 Edinburgh, on the afternoons of Sundays in 1 880-81, at an 
 hour when there is usually no service in the church. They 
 were also delivered in the Park Church, Glasgow. They 
 were largely attended, and are now published in a volume, in 
 the hope that they may prove interesting to many who had 
 not the opportunity of hearing them. The Committee by 
 whom the arrangements in connection with the course were 
 made, desire to record their obligations to the Lecturers for 
 their services, and in particular to Dr William Chambers for 
 so appropriately prefixing to this volume his historical account 
 of St Giles'. It is right also to state here that each Lecturer 
 is only responsible for Avhat is contained in his own Lecture. 
 
 St Giles', Edinburgh, 
 Afaj' 1 88 1. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 History of St Giles' Cathedral Church, 
 
 By W. Chambers, LL.D ix 
 
 Lecture I. — Heathen Scotland to the Introduction of Christianity. 
 By the Rev. James Cameron Lees, D.D., St 
 Giles' Cathedral {High Kirk), Edinburgh I 
 
 Lecture IL— Early Christian Scotland, 400 to 1093 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. A. K. H. Boyd, D.D., First Ministei: 
 of St Andrews 33 
 
 Lecture III.— Mediaeval Scotland, 1093 to 15 13 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. James Campbell, D.D., Minister of 
 Balmerino 65 
 
 Lecture IV. — Pre-Reformation Scotland, 1513 to 1559 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. Alexander F. Mitchell, D.D., 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the 
 University of St Andrews 97 
 
 Lecture V. — The Reformation, 1559 to 1572 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. Donald Macleod, D.D., Minister 
 of the Park Church, Glasgow ; and one of Her 
 Majesty's Chaplains 129 
 
 Lecture VI. — Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland, 
 1572 to 1660 A.D. 
 By the Rev. John Cunningham, D.D., 
 Minister of Crieff. 161 
 
 Lecture VII.— The Covenant, 1660 to 1690 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. Robeet Flint, D.D., LL.D., Pro- 
 fessor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh.. 193 
 
viil ' Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lecture VIII.— The Revolution Settlement, 1690 to 1707 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. Robert Herbert Story, D.D., 
 Minister of Rosneath 225 
 
 Lecture IX. — The Church of the Eighteenth Centuiy, 1707 to 
 1800 A.D. 
 By the Very Rev. John Tulloch, D.D., LL.D., 
 Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews, 
 and one of Her Majesty's Chaplains 257 
 
 Lecture X. — The Church of the Nineteenth Century to 1843. 
 
 By the Rev. A. H. Charteris, D.D., Professor 
 of Biblical Criticism in the University of Edin- 
 burgh ; one of Her Majesty's Chaplains 289 
 
 Lecture XI. — The Church from 1S43 to 1881 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. Archibald Scott, D.D., Minister 
 of St George's Parish, Edinburgh 321 
 
 Lecture XII, — The Church of the Present Day : How far an out- 
 growth from the past, and an expression of the 
 religious thought and life of Scotland. 
 By the Rev. James Macgregor, D.D., Senior 
 Minister of St Cuthbert's Parish, Edinburgh 353 
 
■tni r o/r 
 
 HISTORY\tHS0L0GI0:&:^ 
 
 ^■^ 
 
 r^^"" 
 
 ST GILES' CATHEDRAL CHURCH. 
 
 By W. chambers, LL.D. 
 
 OT Giles' Cathedral Church, in which certain noted 
 ^ Lectures on the History of the Scottish Church have 
 recently been deUvered, is the original parish church of Edin- 
 burgli. Its history can be satisfactorily traced to the early part 
 of the twelfth century, when it superseded a church of much 
 older date. Occupying a prominent central situation on the 
 south side of High Street, its lofty and beautiful spire is seen 
 from a great distance. In the course of time St Giles' has 
 undergone various changes as regards extent and style of 
 architecture. Externally, it seems a modern Gothic structure, 
 with choir, nave, and transepts; but it is in reality old, of 
 various eras, shrouded in an indifferent and comparatively 
 recent casing. No ecclesiastical edifice in Scotland has passed 
 through so many vicissitudes, or has been so cruelly mal- 
 treated, and yet has so tenaciously survived as an interesting 
 memorial of the past. Identified with many stirring events in 
 Scottish history, St Giles' may claim a national character, while 
 it invites attention as a relic of art from the twelfth to the 
 fifteenth century. The present narrative aspires to be only a 
 
iS/ Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 brief historical sketch of this venerable edifice, along with some 
 account of the effort lately made towards its Restoration. 
 
 As early as 854, there was a church in Edinburgh included 
 in the list of ecclesiastical establishments belonging to the 
 Bishopric of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island ; for at that time 
 Lothian, in which Edinburgh is situated, formed a portion of 
 the province of Northumbria. In 1020, Earl Eadulf ceded 
 this part of his territory to Malcolm II,, king of Scotland. 
 Whether the church in Edinburgh was at first dedicated to 
 St Giles, is uncertain. It might have been so, for St Giles 
 lived in the sixth century. A word may be said regarding this 
 personage. 
 
 St Giles, or Sanctus Egidius, as he is termed in Latin, was a 
 renowned mediaeval saint, of whom there are numerous legends. 
 He is said to have been a native of Athens in Greece, and of 
 royal lineage. From Greece he migrated to the south of 
 France, and there in the neighbourhood of Nimes, retired to a 
 cave to spend his life in devotion as a hermit. The only 
 companion of his solitude was a hind, on the milk of which 
 _^ animal he partly subsisted. One 
 
 day, this favourite was pursued by 
 dogs and hunters, and fled to him 
 for protection, which it readily 
 received. Artists have usually 
 painted St Giles in the garb of 
 a monk, with a hind pierced by an 
 arrow, either in his arms or at his 
 feet. Lucas van Leyden, a Dutch 
 painter (1494-1533), represents St 
 Giles with an arrow piercing his 
 hand while he is sheltering the 
 hind ; as shewn in the adjoming 
 wood-cut. St Giles died in 541. 
 Numerous churches and other eccle- 
 siastical establishments, also hospitals, were founded in his 
 
 St Giles. 
 
S^ Gilei Cathedral Church. 
 
 honour. In England alone there were a hundred and forty-six 
 churches dedicated to St Giles. His fame having reached 
 Edinburgh, he was adopted as the patron saint of the church, 
 and a hind figures as one of the supporters in the city arms. 
 For further particulars concerning * Sanct Geill and his Hynde ' 
 we may refer to the late Mrs Jameson's tasteful work. Sacred 
 and Legendary Art, 2 vols. 1857. 
 
 A new church was erected by Alexander I. about 11 20. It 
 consisted of a choir and nave, with small side aisles and central 
 tower, built in a massive style of the early Norman period. 
 From all that can be learned, it covered less space than is 
 occupied by the present edifice. It might be described as a 
 substantial parish church, bordered by the parish burying- 
 ground on the south, the site of which ground is now occupied 
 by the present Parliament Square. To this St Giles' Church 
 there are various references in old charters and other records. 
 It is mentioned in an Act of the reign of Robert the Bruce. 
 The circumstance of the Castle of Edinburgh having been 
 selected as a residence by David I,, is understood to 
 have furthered the endowment and decoration of St Giles', 
 In 1359, David II., by a charter under the great seal, 'con- 
 firmed to the chaplain officiating at the altar of St Katherine's 
 Chapel, in the parish church of St Giles, all the lands 
 of Upper Merchiston, the gift of Roger Hog, burgess of 
 Edinburgh,' 
 
 The church at this early period had for its chief clergyman an 
 official bearing the title of Vicar of St Giles, who possessed an 
 interest in a farm called St Giles' Grange, or more familiarly 
 Sant Geilies Grange, situated about a mile southwards, and 
 which has communicated the name of The Grange to a pleasant 
 suburb in this quarter. 'Under the date of 1243,' says Dr 
 Laing, ' we find the name of a Perpetual Vicar of the Church 
 of St Giles, Edinburgh; this circumstance, along with the 
 earlier reference to its Grange, suggests that the church must 
 have been attached to some religious house, and like the 
 
6"/ Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 Priory of Coldingham, it might for a time have remained 
 subordinate to Lindisfarne.'^ 
 
 St Giles' Church was destined to suffer an unexpected 
 disaster, consequent on the unhappy wars between England 
 and Scotland in the fourteenth century, Richard II., in 
 retaliation for alleged wrongs, invaded Scotland with an 
 English army in 1385. He laid waste the country, took 
 possession of Edinburgh, and after an occupation of five days, 
 committed the city to the flames. St Giles' Church perished 
 in the conflagration. All that remained of the building were 
 the entrance porch, a part of the choir and nave, with the 
 heavier portions that formed the base of the spire. 
 
 Rallying after this grievous calamity, the town was rebuilt, 
 and the civic authorities made a strenuous eftbrt to reconstruct 
 St Giles'. They entered into a contract for the building of 
 'five chapels' in St Giles', with pillars and vaulted roofs, 
 covered with stone, and lighted with windows. The contract 
 was dated 29th November 1387, in the reign of Robert II., 
 and we may assume that the alteration was completed early 
 in the fifteenth century. The part so executed was on the 
 south-west of the nave. The style of art was lighter and 
 more ornamental than that which had been destroyed. After- 
 wards, some side aisles were added through the munificence 
 of pious individuals. These new parts are the fifteenth- 
 century style of art, as will be afterwards more particularly 
 described. 
 
 On entering the building by the doorway from the High 
 Street, the visitor immediately ascends a flight of steps into the 
 spacious lobby constructed out of the transept, and turning 
 
 ^ The Charters of the Collegiate Church of St Giles, Edinburgh, edited by 
 the late Dr David Laing. Forming one of the Bannatyne Club books, 
 presented by Sir George Clerk, Baronet, of Penicuick, and Alexander 
 Maconochie Welwood of Meadowbank and Garvock, Esq., the work is 
 remarkable as a monument of Dr Laing's literary industry and antiquarian 
 knowledge. 
 
St cues' Cathedral CJuircJu 
 
 to the left, enters the choir on the east. Here, he will have a 
 good opportunity of observing the diversity in the architecture. 
 The pillars first reached are of a plain style, octagonal in shape, 
 with capitals to correspond. They bear no heraldic devices. 
 These were the original pillars of 1120, which survived the fire 
 of 1385. In the course of the repairs recently completed, when 
 the colouring and dirt of centuries had been removed, the 
 marks of fire were seen on these sturdy Norman pillars, 
 now seven hundred years old, and seemingly indestructible. 
 
 In the north wall, under the second window from the east, 
 there is a plain arched recess, the lower part being level like a 
 shelf. An opinion has been entertained that the recess had 
 formed part of a monument to Napier of Merchiston, inventor 
 of logarithms. This opinion is untenable. Napier died in 
 16 1 7, whereas the recess has been in the wall since the fifteenth 
 century. The recess is the relic of a mural tomb or shrine; 
 the level part having most likely been appropriated to a recum- 
 bent figure. Originally, the label moulding on the outer edge 
 of the arch had been fringed with finely-carved crockets repre- 
 senting bunches of oak leaves, but these decorations were cut 
 away at some unknown period, to suit the plastering of the 
 wall ! The marks of the crockets have been traced. This 
 arched recess has been copied in forming a similar one on the 
 outer side of the wall in 1829, which contains a tablet evidently 
 removed from a monument of the Napier family. The tablet is 
 no doubt that which marked the burial-place of the family on 
 the south side of the church. 
 
 Passing beyond the old pillars, and approaching the great 
 east window, we find two arches, one on each side, resting on 
 pillars of an ornate fifteenth-century style. These pillars have 
 bases of foliated sculpture, fluted shafts, and elaborately orna- 
 mented capitals. Two similar pillars are half sunk in the eastern 
 gable. The date of these four pillars with their lofty arches is 
 determined by their heraldic devices, more particularly the 
 devices on the first pillar on the north, usually called the 
 
tS/ Giles' Cathedral ChurcJi. 
 
 King's Pillar. This pillar bears four distinct shields, which 
 have reference to James II., king 
 of Scotland, and his queen, Mary of 
 Gueldres, to whom he was married 
 in 1449. These two had a son, 
 James, who was born in 1453. There 
 is reason to believe that the shield 
 facing the east, which we indicate as 
 No. I, was carved and set up in 
 honour of that infant prince. It shews 
 the Scottish lion, rampant, within a 
 double tressure, with a label of three 
 points, denoting an heir or prince. 
 The shield No. 2, facing the north, 
 impaled, and incomplete at the 
 top, is that of the queen, Mary of 
 Gueldres. The shield No. 3, facing 
 the west, which has the lion, with a 
 double tressure, also incomplete, is 
 that of the king, James II. The 
 shield No. 4, facing the south, has 
 three fleurs-de-lis for France, with 
 which country Scotland had intimate 
 relations. 
 
 King's Pillar. 
 
 No. 1. 
 
 No. 2. 
 
 No. 3. 
 
Sf Giles'' Cathedral Church, 
 
 i^ 
 
 No. 4. 
 
 These royal shields, silent and unobtrusive, and which 
 have happily weathered the civil and religious broils of 
 four centuries, tell a tale of mingled joy and sorrow — 
 the birth of an heir to the throne, the death of the king, shortly 
 followed by the death of the heart-broken queen-mother. The 
 happiness of James II. and his queen, Mary of Gueldres, was 
 of short duration. James, who had been 
 a kind patron of Edinburgh, was brought 
 to it a lifeless corpse from Roxburgh, 
 where he had been killed by the bursting 
 of a cannon, 1460. Mary of Gueldres, 
 his pious widow, a patroness of art, and 
 foundress of the Trinity College Church, 
 survived him only three years. Their son, 
 the boy prince, who on the death of his 
 father became James III., was murdered 
 1488. All things considered, we are 
 inclined to think that the date of the pillar must be set down as 
 1460, the imperfection in the upper part of the king and queen's 
 shields almost pointing to the tragical 
 event of that year. The work of recon- 
 structing the choir went on, however, for 
 a number of years afterwards. 
 
 On the half-pillar on the north side of 
 the great eastern window, there is a shield. 
 No. 5, with three cranes gorged; such 
 being the arms of Thomas Cranstoun, a 
 burgess and chief magistrate of Edinburgh 
 in 1439, and again in 1454, and who 
 most likely had taken an active part in 
 promoting the reconstruction of the church- 
 of his day. 
 
 We now proceed to the pillar immediately opposite, on the 
 south side of the choir. Here there are four shields, which we 
 shall speak of separately. Shield No. 6, facing the east, bears 
 
 No. 5. 
 
 -the city improver 
 
Sf Giles' Cathedral Church, 
 
 the heads of three unicorns. Such were the Preston arms, set 
 up in honour of WilHam Preston of Gorton, to whom we shall 
 immediately refer as an esteemed benefactor of the church. 
 Shield No. 7, facing the north, bears three otter heads, being 
 the arms of the family of Otterburn. The person specially 
 
 No. 7. 
 
 No. 8. 
 
 honoured was probably Nicholas de Otterburn, as he is styled 
 in old writs, a learned official, much employed in public affairs, 
 and who was Vicar of Edinburgh in 1455. He had a nephew, 
 John de Otterburn, who founded com- 
 memorative services in St Giles'. Shield 
 No. 8, facing the west, bears the arms 
 of Kennedy, being a chevron between 
 three crosses crossleted. This is a finely 
 executed shield, with a double tressure, 
 and refers to a person of distinction. We 
 have no doubt it was placed in honour 
 of Lord James Kennedy, a grandson of 
 Robert III., and Bishop of St Andrews, 
 who rendered valuable assistance to the 
 state on the sudden death of James II., and superintended the 
 education of James III. He was designated by Mary of 
 Gueldres, 'our dearest cousin,' and is remembered as one of 
 the greatest men of his time — great from being a man of 
 learning and peaceful counsels. No. 9, facing the south, is 
 
 No. 9. 
 
St Gi/es' Cathedral Church. 
 
 No. 10. 
 
 a plain shield, with a castle, the central figure in the city 
 arms. 
 
 On the half-pillar next the great window 
 on the south, is seen a shield, No. lo, 
 bearing the arms of Napier of Merchiston, 
 who was Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 
 1457. The shield, styled the Lennox 
 shield, has a saltire, engrailed, cantoned 
 with four rosettes, which the family of 
 Napier assumed before the middle of the 
 fifteenth century. 
 
 There are three other renderings of 
 the city arms in the choir, but only one of them requires 
 notice. It is a square carving in stone over the doorway to 
 the small vestry, on the left on 
 entering the church. As shewn 
 in the accompanying wood-cut, 
 an angel is represented holding 
 a shield, No. 11, on which a 
 castle is emblazoned. This we 
 consider to be a very old render- 
 ing, as early as the twelfth or 
 thirteenth century. The orna- 
 mental bordering is of unusual 
 elegance. The existence of the 
 stone was unknown until the 
 recent Restoration of the choir, 
 
 when by the removal of a stair, the doorway with its character- 
 istic mouldings was disclosed. 
 
 Besides the extension of the choir eastwards about 1460, the 
 walls surmounting the older pillars were raised and improved. 
 Part of the original groining which sprang from the capitals of 
 the pillars still remains, partially chiselled away. The clerestory 
 groining is remarkable for its rich variety of bosses. On one 
 of the bosses is seen the monogram i h 0. Around another 
 
 No. 11. 
 
Sf Gives' Cathedral Church. 
 
 bosse is the following legend : ^b^. Qra. pla. !bu0. izzM ; such 
 being an abbreviation of the words, Ave Maria, gratia plena, 
 dominus tecum (Hail Mary, full of 
 mercy, the Lord be with thee). We 
 present a wood-engraving of this re- 
 markable bosse, which escaped era- 
 sure at the Reformation seemingly on 
 account of its great height from the 
 ground. It is to be viewed as an 
 antiquarian curiosity. In the centre 
 of some other bosses is an orifice 
 from which had depended a chain or 
 cord sustaining a lamp. One of these lamps had hung imme- 
 diately in front of the high-altar. It is learned that the high- 
 altar of the early church of 1120 was not shifted on the 
 reconstruction of the choir. It remained in its original place, 
 and there was an altar of lesser importance placed behind it, 
 under the great eastern window. 
 
 The part of the choir between the southern row of pillars and 
 the south wall was originally known as the Lady Aisle. Of this 
 aisle Dr Laing says: 'In the charter dated nth January 
 1454-5, it is narrated that William Preston of Gourton, then 
 deceased, and interred in the Lady Aisle, had with diligent 
 labour and great expense, and aided by a high and mighty 
 prince, the king of France, and many other Lords of France, 
 succeeded in obtaining possession of the arm-bone of St Giles ; 
 and this inestimable relique had been freely bequeathed by him 
 " to oure mothir kirk of Sant Gell of Edynburgh withouten any 
 condicion." The Provost, Bailies, and community of Edin- 
 burgh, deeply impressed with the importance of such an 
 acquisition, voluntarily undertook to commence Avithin one year, 
 and to complete in the space of six or seven years, an aisle 
 " furth fra our Lady Isle, where the said William lyis," to erect 
 there his monument with a brass tablet, with his arms and an 
 inscription, specifying his having brought that relique to Scot- 
 
Sf Gt'/gs' Cathedral Church. 
 
 land ; his arms also to be put in hewn stone in three other 
 parts of the aisle ; also an altar, and to endow a chaplain to 
 sing for him from that time forth, and granting to his nearest 
 relations the privilege of carrying the relique in all public 
 processions.' 
 
 Such is the account given of William Preston of Gorton, 
 whose arms, as above mentioned, consist of three heads of 
 unicorns. The obligations in the charter were faithfully carried 
 out. An aisle was constructed on the south, outside the Lady 
 Aisle. For the purpose of bringing it into connection with the 
 church, the wall, in which there were three windows, was 
 removed; and instead of the windows, three arches were 
 formed, with pillars corresponding to the fifteenth-century 
 arches and pillars in the choir. A window was placed in the 
 east end of the Preston Aisle, and three windows along its south 
 side. The west end of the aisle opened into the south transept. 
 The Preston Aisle was fifty-nine feet in length by twenty-four 
 feet in breadth, by which addition the choir was considerably 
 enlarged, while the architectural effect, enhanced by a vista of 
 pillars, was materially improved. In the charter, a monument 
 to Preston with a brass tablet is spoken of It has long since 
 disappeared. 
 
 About the time of the erection of the Preston Aisle, the 
 ecclesiastical organisation of St Giles' underwent an important 
 change. In 1466, a charter of James III., who was still a boy 
 of thirteen years of age, converted the parish church of St 
 Giles' into a collegiate foundation, with a chapter to consist of 
 a Provost, Curate, sixteen Prebendaries, a Minister of the 
 Choir, four Choristers, a Sacristan, and a Beadle ; all of whom 
 were exclusive of chaplains ministering at thirty-six altars 
 throughout the establishment. Altogether, the number of 
 ecclesiastics would not be less than a hundred, supported by 
 particular endowments drawn from certain lands, oblations at 
 the altars, and by donations of food and other articles. In 
 the transition from the parochial to the collegiate organisation, 
 
Sf Gibes' Cathedral Church. 
 
 William Forbes, Perpetual Vicar, was advanced to the Provost- 
 ship of the new foundation. At his decease he Avas succeeded 
 by Gawin Douglas, third son of Archibald, fifth Earl of Angus, 
 and who with poetical tastes did good service to Scottish 
 literature, which was still in its infancy. His longest poem was 
 the ' Palace of Honour,' an apologue addressed to James IV. 
 The most remarkable of his productions was a translation of 
 Virgil's ^neid into Scottish verse, being the first version of a 
 Latin classic into any British tongue. Gawin Douglas was 
 promoted to be Bishop of Dunkeld, and died in 1522. 
 
 From his literary attainments, as well as from his social 
 position while Provost of St Giles', and as being a son of the 
 Earl of Angus who was Lord Provost of Edinburgh, we are to 
 imagine Gawin Douglas as a favourite guest at Holyrood, 
 where James IV. held court with his queen, Margaret, both of 
 whom were encouratgers of learning and the useful arts. The 
 art of printing had been introduced by Caxton into England 
 about 1477 ; but it was unknown in Scotland until it was 
 introduced by Walter Chepman and Andrew Myllar, under the 
 auspices of James IV. and his Queen, in 1507. The types, 
 apparatus, and workmen appear to have been brought from 
 France. Chepman was the moneyed man in the concern, and 
 from all we can learn, he was a person of extraordinary energy. 
 The first work attempted was a collection of ancient ballads, 
 forming a thin quarto volume in black-letter, which appeared in 
 1508. A fac-simile was reprinted in 1827, under the indefati- 
 gable editorship of Dr Laing ; but copies of it are exceedingly 
 scarce. Myllar finally gave up the printing profession, which 
 continued to be carried on with success by Chepman, in an 
 establishment at the head of Blackfriars Wynd, High Street. 
 Walter Chepman became a wealthy and respected citizen, and 
 with other properties, acquired the estate of Ewerland, near 
 Cramond. 
 
 The wealth, piety, and munificence of Walter Chepman, the 
 Scottish Caxton, were manifested in various endowments con- 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 nected with St Giles'. On the 21st August 1513, he founded 
 a chapel, or aisle, in honour of his royal patron and kind 
 friend, James IV., the Queen Margaret, and their offspring. 
 In less than a month, James perished at Flodden, 9th of 
 September 15 13. This unfortunate event did not stop the 
 completion of the aisle. It projected southwards from the 
 Preston Aisle, one of the windows of which was appropriated 
 to form the entrance, and was immediately east of the south 
 transept, of which exteriorly it seemed an enlargement. This 
 handsome aisle became a family chapel and place of burial. 
 Walter Chepman died in 1532, and here in the vault below he 
 was buried. 
 
 The disturbances consequent on the change of religious 
 sentiment in Scotland, began to break out in Edinburgh in 
 1556, and came to a head in 1558, when a procession of clergy 
 on the anniversary of St Giles, ist September, was riotously 
 dispersed by the populace. An efhgy of the saint was torn in 
 pieces; and soon afterwards, in the national convulsion, the 
 clerical community of this ancient church disappear, while their 
 means of livelihood are confiscated. As concerns the deplen- 
 ishing of the church, the civic authorities interfered. By the 
 help of sailors from Leith, with ropes and ladders, the altars 
 were taken down, and cleared out. All the gold, silver, and 
 other valuables were carefully catalogued and secured, as may 
 be seen from existing town records. After being stripped of its 
 silver mountings, the arm-bone of St Giles, which about a 
 hundred years previously had been thought so very precious, 
 was, as is alleged, thrown into the adjacent burying-ground. It 
 was a clean sweep. Excepting perhaps a pulpit or. a reading- 
 desk, and a few benches, nothing was left in the old edifice. 
 
 Under the settlement of affairs at the Refonnation, 1560, 
 the collegiate character of St Giles' Church disappeared, and it 
 resumed its original condition of a parish church. John Knox 
 was constituted pastor, with a suitable stipend from the city 
 funds. In starting afresh after the recent clearing out, the 
 
Sf Gi/es' Cathedral Church. 
 
 church must have presented an empty, desolate appearance. 
 At that period there were no fixed pews. The seats were 
 chairs or wooden stools, provided chiefly by worshippers for 
 their own accommodation. The bulk of the people stood, and 
 they would gladly stand for hours listening to their favourite 
 preacher. John Knox often preached, it is said, to three thou- 
 sand persons. The work he went through was immense. He 
 preached twice on Sunday, and three times every other day of 
 the week, besides attending to other clerical duties. His only 
 assistant was a ' Reader.' The choir of the church with its 
 extensions on the south we have referred to, formed the place 
 of assemblage ; but the voice of the preacher rang through the 
 nave and far withdrawing aisles, which were left open, and 
 formed a convenient lounge for the citizens. That is the 
 picture we are to form of the interior of St Giles' Church 
 immediately after the Reformation. 
 
 Knox occupied a conspicuous position when acting as chap- 
 lain at the funeral of the * Good Regent,' James Stewart, Earl 
 of Murray, who was assassinated at Linlithgow, 23d January 
 1569-70. The occasion is memorable in the history of St 
 Giles'. 'Upon Tuesday, the 14th of February,' says M'Crie, 
 ' the Regent's corpse was brought from the palace of Holyrood, 
 and interred in the south aisle of the collegiate Church of St 
 Giles'. Before the funeral, Knox preached a sermon on these 
 words : " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." Three 
 thousand persons were dissolved in tears before him while he 
 described the Regent's virtues and bewailed his loss. Buchanan 
 paid his tribute to the memory of the deceased by writing 
 the inscription placed on his monument with that impressive 
 simplicity and brevity which are dictated by genuine grief 
 
 The death of Murray led to a keen contest as to who should 
 be Regent. The choice fell on the Earl of Lennox, paternal 
 grandfather of the young king, James VL This gave offence 
 to Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange, who had hitherto belonged 
 to the king's party, and as such was Governor of Edinburgh 
 
S^ Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 Castle. He now changed sides, went over to the party of the 
 exiled Mary Queen of Scots, and commenced a fierce civil 
 war, in which he fortified Edinburgh, and on the 28th March 
 157 1, placed a military force on the roof and steeple of St 
 Giles' Church, to keep the citizens in awe. The craftsmen 
 of the city, however, were not easily daunted. They broke 
 into the church, and to bring matters to a crisis, proposed 
 to pull down the pillars which sustained the roof. Alarmed 
 for their safety, Kirkaldy's men, on the 4th June, began to 
 make holes in the vaulted ceiling, from which they fired 
 down with muskets on the crowd of assailants. Calderwood, 
 the church historian, says they * made the vaute like a riddle 
 to shoot through ; ' which gives us an impressive idea of this 
 warlike strife inside a church. Kirkaldy withdrew his forces 
 in July 1572. Under the merciless Regency of Morton, he 
 was hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh, 3d August 1573. 
 
 The roof of the church being duly repaired after the late 
 hostile visitation, things went on in their usual quiet way. 
 But St Giles' was destined to suffer infinitely more damage 
 than anything that had been done to it by the operations of 
 Kirkaldy of Grange — damage that has taken three centuries 
 to remedy, and is not remedied yet. Previous to the death of 
 Knox, the magistrates and council began to section the church 
 of St Giles' into separate divisions. This proceeding was 
 commenced within ten years after the Reformation. The 
 first division we hear of was for the Tolbooth Church, situated 
 at the south-west corner of the edifice. 'On Sunday, 21st 
 September 1572,' says M'Crie, ' Knox began to preach in 
 the Tolbooth Church, which had been fitted up for him.' 
 On Sunday, 9th November following, he preached in the 
 same place at the installation of Lawson, his colleague and 
 successor. 'After the sermon,' adds M'Crie, 'he removed 
 with the audience to the larger church,' that is, to the choir, 
 which luckily escaped sectionising. This was John Knox's 
 last sermon. On quitting the church leaning feebly on his 
 
Sf Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 stafif, he was attended down the street to his house by his 
 audience, to take the last look of their pastor. He died on 
 the 24th November, and was buried in the churchyard of St 
 Giles'. The spot cannot now be identified. It is near to the 
 equestrian statue of Charles II. in the Parliament Square. 
 
 In May 1590, James VI. and his young queen, Anne of 
 Denmark, ceremoniously visited St Giles' Church, when there 
 were thanksgivings for their marriage and safe arrival in 
 Scotland. The choir, which was fitted up for the occasion, 
 henceforth became a place of public worship for the king and 
 queen, and from this time we begin to hear of a royal pew, 
 or * loft,' with seats for the officers of state, the judges, and the 
 magistrates of the city. James sometimes went to St Giles' for 
 the purpose of delivering public orations ; he did so on Sunday, 
 3d April 1603, to bid farewell to the citizens on his departure 
 to take possession of the throne of England. 
 
 We now arrive at the important events in the history of 
 St Giles', consequent on the introduction of Episcopacy into 
 Scotland by James VI., and his successor, Charles I., in the 
 early part of the seventeenth century. Hitherto, Edinburgh 
 and the adjacent district of country had ecclesiastically per- 
 tained to the diocese of St Andrews. Charles I. now resolved 
 to form Edinburgh into a bishopric, by royal charter, and to 
 constitute St Giles' the cathedral of the new diocese. The 
 proceedings of ^Charles on this occasion are faithfully detailed 
 by Maitland in his valuable History of Edinburgh (i vol. folio 
 1754). The facts of the historian are drawn from city records, 
 and are narrated as follows : 
 
 ' King Charles I., by his Charter of the 29th September, anno 
 1633, having founded a Bishopric in Edinburgh, appointed for 
 its Diocess all Parts besouth the Frith of Forth, belonging to 
 the Arch-bishopric of St Andrews, in the County of Edin- 
 burgh, Constabulary of Haddington, and Shires of Linlithgow, 
 Stirling, and Berwick, and Bailiwick of Lauderdale ; with all 
 the Rights, Powers and Privileges of a distinct Bishopric or 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 Diocess, in as full and ample a Manner as any other Bishopric 
 in Scotland ; and appointed St Giles's Church in Edinburgh for 
 its Cathedral; with all the Rights, Liberties and Immunities 
 belonging to a Cathedral Church, and this new Erection to be 
 denominated the Bishopric and Diocess of Edinburgh ; to 
 have and injoy all the Honours, Dignities, Privileges, Author- 
 ities and Jurisdictions, with all the Liberties and Immunities 
 injoyed or possessed by any Diocesan or Bishop within Scot- 
 land, and to be a Suffragan to the Arch-bishop of St Andrews. 
 
 'And the Bishop to have Precedence of all other Scottish 
 Suffragans in Parliament, Councils and publick Conventions, 
 immediately after the Archbishop of Glasgow. And, for the 
 good Government of this new Bishopric, by the Charter of 
 Foundation, it was to consist of a Bishop, a Dean, and twelve 
 Prebendaries, to whom and their Successors the King granted 
 the Churches of St Giles, Grayfriars, Trinity College, and that 
 of the South-east Parish in Edinburgh, with those of Holyrood- 
 house, Dalkeith, Dunbar, Haddington and Tranent in the 
 County of East Lothian ; Liberton in Mid-Lothian ; Falkirk in 
 Linlithgowshire ; and that of the Town of Stirling in Stirling- 
 shire, with their appurtenancies ; with a Power to the Bishop to 
 have a Seal like other Bishops, to transact his Affairs with; 
 besides, another Seal for him and the Chapter, for transacting 
 the Business of the Chapter, to be called the Seal of the 
 Chapter of the Bishopric of Edinburgh : And to prepare 
 St Giles's Church for the Reception of the new Establishment, 
 the King sent a Letter to the Common Council of Edinburgh ; 
 of which the following is a Copy : 
 "Charles R. 
 
 " Trustie and weill belovit we greit you weill. 
 
 "Wheras of oure Princelie Motive and Zeale for the 
 Advancement and Government of the Churche of that oure 
 Kingdome, we have, by the Advice of the chiefest of oure 
 Clergie, thairof, erected at our Chairges, a Bishopric of new, 
 to be callit the Bishopric of Edinburgh, whairby none of your 
 
iS/ cues' Cathedral Church. 
 
 Priviledges or Liberties ar anie wayes to be infringed, but 
 rather preservit and increased : And wheras to that Purpose, 
 it is verie expedient, that Saint Geille's Church (designed by us 
 to be the Cathedral Churche of that Bishopric) be ordered, as 
 is decent and fitt for a Churche of that Eminencie, and accord- 
 ing to the first Intentioun of the Erectors and Founders thairof ; 
 which was to be keiped conforme to the Largeness and Con- 
 specuitie of the Foundatioun and Fabrick : and not to be 
 indirectlie parcelled and disjoinit by Wallis and Partitiounes, 
 as now it is, without anie Warrant from anie of oure Royal! 
 Predecessoures. 
 
 " Oure Pleasure is, that with all Diligence, you cans raze to 
 the Ground the East-wall of the said Churche ; and sick-lyke, 
 that you cans raze to the Ground the Wester-wall therin, 
 betwixt this and Lambas insewing ; at or before which Tyme, 
 we require you to caus finish the new Tolbuith, to the effect it 
 may be for the Use of oure Churche and uther Judicatories and 
 Commissiounes, as the Tyme and Occasioun shall require. 
 We bid you fairweill, from oure Court at Whitehall, the 1 1 th 
 October 1633." 
 
 'In the year 1636, the Town Council, on the tenth Day of 
 February, ordered one of the Bailiffs, and one of the Clerks of 
 Edinburgh, to desire James Hanna, the Dean of St Giles's 
 Church, to repair to Durham in the Northern Part of England, 
 to take a Draught of the Choir of the Cathedral Church in that 
 City, in order to fit up and beautify the Inside of the Choir of 
 St Giles's Church after the same Manner.' 
 
 ' Surely,' continues Maitland, 'never was the Church Hierarchy 
 by a Bishop of so short Duration, as this of Edinburgh ; for it 
 was erected in the year 1633J and subverted aimo 1639, by the 
 Abolishment of Episcopacy in Scotland, both by the Parliament 
 and General Assembly.' 
 
 The change in the ecclesiastical organisation of the country 
 miglit in time have been accepted and tolerated but for 
 the indiscreet zeal of Charles I., who, by an imperious com- 
 
Sf Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 mand, ordered the English Service-book to be read in every 
 parish church. This brought matters to a crisis. The day on 
 which the Book of Common Prayer was first attempted to be 
 read in the Church of St Giles', was Sunday, the 23d of July 
 1637. The officiating clergyman was the dean, Mr James 
 Hanna ; and on his intimating that the collect for the day was 
 that of the seventh Sunday after Trinity, a popular outbreak 
 took place, and a strenuous female, uttering some violent 
 reproaches, threw the stool on which she had been seated at 
 the dean's head. The bishop from the pulpit endeavoured to 
 calm the uproar which ensued, but in vain. The magistrates 
 also made efforts to allay the disturbance, but failed to do so ; 
 and they were obliged to clear out the multitude by main 
 force. The uproar of course arose from dislike to the Anglican 
 liturgical service, which differed from the Book of Common 
 Order hitherto in use in St Giles', as indeed throughout the 
 country generally since the time of John Knox. There seems 
 to have been a notion among the rioters that Popery was about 
 to be introduced along with the Anglican service, and hence 
 the intensity of the excitement. As regards the Collect for the 
 day which had been intimated by Dean Hanna, there is nothing 
 in it to give offence to any one.-^ 
 
 The scene of this extraordinary tumult was in the south 
 transept, or the middle church, as some historians call it ; 
 the choir, at the time, being in course of preparation for 
 the cathedral service. The spot on which Dean Hanna 
 was assailed was, as nearly as can be defined, near the base 
 of the stone arch on the left on entering the transept from 
 the Preston Aisle. Consequent on the tumult and the circum- 
 stances that ensued, St Giles' ceased to have the status of a 
 
 ^ The collect is as follows : ' Lord of all power and might, who art the 
 author and giver of all good things, graft in our hearts the love of Thy 
 name, increase in us true rehgion, nourish us with all goodness, and of 
 Thy great mercy keep us in the same ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 Amen.' 
 
S/ Giles' Cathedi'al Church. 
 
 cathedral ; but this was resumed on the establishment of 
 Episcopacy in 1662. It remained so until the Revolution of 
 1688, when Alexander Rose, the last of the race of prelates, 
 was ejected. The building is still popularly designated St 
 Giles' Cathedral, or St Giles' Cathedral Church. As is seen by 
 our quotation from Maitland, Charles I. commanded the removal 
 of the cross partition walls in St Giles', in order to adapt it as a 
 cathedral — which was in effect a kind of restoration. On the 
 resumption of Presbytery in 1639, the walls were speedily re- 
 erected, and the building relapsed into the unsightly condition 
 it has retained until our times. 
 
 Spottiswood, in his History of the Church and State of Scot- 
 land (1655), gives the following list of the bishops of Edinburgh 
 until his time : 
 
 ' The first Bishop of Edinburgh was William Forbes, Doctour 
 of Divinity, one of the Preachers in Edinburgh (before, 
 Principal of the Marischal Colledge of Aberdene), a very worthy 
 Person. His Works shew him to have been a man of vast 
 Learning and sound Judgment. He sate but a little while, and 
 died at Edinburgh about the year 1634. 
 
 ' Upon his death, David Lindsay, Bishop of Briechen, was 
 translated to Edinburgh. The Fury of the rude Multitude fell 
 heavy upon this Bishop, even to the manifest danger and 
 hazard of his Life, upon the first reading of the Book of 
 Common Prayer in Edinburgh, July 1637. He was thrust out, 
 with the rest of the Bishops, by the Covenanters, 1638. 
 
 ' George Wishart, Doctour of Divinity, was, upon the Restitu- 
 tion of the Hierarchy, anno 1662, promoted to the Bishopric 
 of Edinburgh. This worthy man was, 1638, Preacher at Leith, 
 and for his Loyalty had very hard measure from the Cove- 
 nanters, being thrice plundered of all that he had, and thrice 
 imprisoned. But being delivered from thence, he went beyond 
 Sea with the Marquess of Montrose, 1646.^ He died at 
 
 1 Wishart was a man of considerable erudition. He wrote a memoir of 
 Montrose in Latin, which has been translated into English. 
 
Sf Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 Edinburgh, anno 1670. Upon his death, Alexander Young, 
 Archdeacon of Saint Andrews, was preferred to the Bishopric 
 of Edinburgh.' 
 
 To proceed with our account of the Cathedral Church, 
 It has been stated that the ancient entrance porch was 
 among the parts spared at the conflagration of 1385. This 
 porch was on the north side of the building, and was con- 
 nected with the nave, so as to form a convenient entrance 
 from the public thoroughfare. The arch, rounded in form, 
 was of an ornate Norman style. The archivolt in several 
 divisions exhibited figures of animals and grotesque heads, 
 along with crenellated and chevron mouldings. By an act 
 of barbarism, this ancient arch, a precious relic of the twelfth 
 century, was taken down and utterly destroyed in the course 
 of some repairs on the building in 1797 or 1798. Fortunately, 
 before its removal, a representation of it was taken by an artist, 
 of which an engraved copy appears as a frontispiece to Dr 
 Laing's laborious work on St Giles', 
 
 Besides the choir, which formed the parish church, there 
 was at first only the Tolbooth Church, as a subordinate place 
 of worship in St Giles'. It derived its name from including a 
 portion of the Tolbooth, or Town-House of Edinburgh; the 
 original meaning of the word Tolbooth being a place for 
 receiving rents or duties imposed by the civic authority. 
 Even before it became a church, this part of St Giles', along 
 with a portion of the nave, had been used for meetings of 
 Parliament. In the upper part of an adjoining building now 
 removed were the Justiciary Court-room, and the Council 
 Chamber for the city, connected with which was the Town 
 Clerk's office. The Tolbooth Church, it must be understood, 
 had no connection with the tall dark building in High Street, 
 latterly known as the Tolbooth, or common prison, which was 
 removed within our recollection. 
 
 In the palmiest of its pre-Reformation days, St Giles' had 
 from these circumstances a certain dash of secularism. It was 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Chttrch. 
 
 in some sort a public Exchange. From the want of a place of 
 resort for men of business, the church offered a means of 
 meeting to persons who had to enter into or discharge con- 
 tracts, to pay accounts, and so forth ; for which miscellaneous 
 purposes the high-altar of St Giles', or some other altar in the 
 church, was a stipulated place of meeting. In such acts of 
 desecration, one is in a small way reminded of the practices 
 which were so objectionable in the Temple of Jerusalem. 
 
 After the clearance at the Reformation, St Giles' was still 
 haunted for business transactions. The south transept became 
 the favourite resort ; and when the Earl of Murray's monu- 
 mental tomb was set up, it answered as well as the old high- 
 altar at which to make bargains or to discharge obligations. 
 From a popular belief that Duke Humphry of Gloucester, 
 youngest son of Henry IV., was buried in Old St Paul's, there 
 arose the jocularity that persons who strolled about in St Paul's 
 for want of a dinner, were said to dine with Duke Humphry. 
 A similar pleasantry prevailed concerning the tomb of the Earl 
 of Murray. Sempill, a Scottish poet, refers in verse to the 
 spot as a convenient lounge for impecunious and hungry idlers. 
 One of them with sad internal commotion pathetically says : 
 
 * I dined with saints and gentlemen, 
 
 Ev'n sweet Saint Giles and the Earl of Murray.' 
 
 Long before the Reformation, St Giles' had been freely 
 used as a place of interment. In most cases the interments 
 were in graves below the floor, as was not unusual in old 
 edifices of this kind, and is still in a limited way the case in 
 Westminster Abbey. Persons of distinction were entombed 
 in one or more vaults in the southern aisles. Here the Earl 
 of Murray, as above related, was interred in 1569-70; his 
 representative is the present Earl of Moray. The next 
 individual of note laid in this quarter was John Stewart, 
 fourth Earl of Athole, Lord High Chancellor of Scotland, who 
 died in 1579. His title was conferred on John Murray, Earl 
 
Si Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 of Tullibardine, who married his grand-daughter. The repre- 
 sentative of the family is now the Duke of Athole. A third 
 'distinguished person entombed near the spot was John 
 Graham, third Earl of Montrose, High Treasurer, and after- 
 wards Lord High Chancellor. On the accession of James VI. to 
 the throne of England, he was appointed Viceroy in Scotland, 
 presided at the parliament at Perth, 1606, and died in 1608. 
 
 The grandson of this last-mentioned personage was James 
 Graham, fifth Earl, created Marquis of Montrose, who dis- 
 tinguished himself as a military commander in the cause of 
 Royalty during the Civil War. Montrose's history is well 
 known. Captured and brought into Edinburgh, he was 
 condemned, and executed 21st May 1650. His body was 
 dismembered. His limbs were sent to different parts of 
 Scotland, his head was stuck on a pike on the Tolbooth or 
 common prison, while his body was buried in the Borough- 
 muir under the gallows. Here, two days afterwards, some 
 adventurous spirits in the cavalier interest contrived to take 
 away the heart of Montrose, and convey it to Margaret, Lady 
 Napier, wife of Alexander, first Baron Napier of Merchiston, 
 and daughter of John, fourth Earl of Montrose. The heart of 
 the great hero being duly embalmed, was inclosed in a gold 
 casket for careful preservation. There is a portrait of Lady 
 Napier with this interesting object by her side. It was the 
 destiny of the casket to undergo a number of romantic 
 adventures at home and abroad, which we have not space to 
 relate. Ultimately, when in the custody of a person in France, 
 it disappeared during the revolutionary troubles, and has not 
 since been heard of. 
 
 After the Restoration, the scattered remains of Montrose 
 were collected with tokens of respect, and deposited in the 
 Abbey of Holyrood. Thence they were brought by a solemn 
 funeral procession, at which the magistrates of Edinburgh 
 assisted, and entombed in St Giles', 14th May 1661. The 
 ordinary belief is that his tomb was in the vault underneath 
 
Sf Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 the aisle of Walter Chepman. Mark Napier, in his Memoirs 
 of Montrose, states that he was interred in the vault of his 
 grandfather, the Viceroy of Scotland. Our own opinion coin- 
 cides with the ordinary belief, that Montrose was buried in the 
 vault beneath Chepman's Aisle, where possibly his grandfather 
 had been previously interred. The descendant and represent- 
 ative of the great Marquis is the present Duke of Montrose. 
 The burial of persons of note in St Giles' did not cease till past 
 the middle of the eighteenth century. 
 
 In process of time, as Edinburgh grew in population, more 
 parish churches were required. The proper course would 
 have been to build new churches within the parishes to which 
 they nominally pertained. Instead of this, a plan was adopted 
 of utilising St Giles', by cutting it up into sections, and calling 
 each section a parish church. Hence, the grouping of churches 
 for different congregations in this unfortunate building. A 
 number of offices for secular affairs got edged out, and the 
 general condition of the building was more spiritualised, though 
 in a manner not a little repugnant to the senses. At the middle 
 of the eighteenth century, the list of churches in the edifice 
 stood as follows. The Choir or High Church in the east. 
 The Tolbooth Church in the south-west. The Old Church in 
 the middle and part of the south side. The Little Kirk, or 
 Haddo's Hole, in the north-west. Such name was familiarly 
 given to it in consequence of an apartment above it having 
 served as a prison to Sir John Gordon of Haddo in 1644, 
 previous to his trial and execution. The allocation into these 
 several places of worship left two portions of the building 
 undisposed of. These were the Preston Aisle, which was used 
 for meetings of various kinds ; and the dark central space under 
 the spire with the north transept. This last-mentioned portion 
 was finally fitted up as the Police Office. We remember St 
 Giles' in this condition in 1818. 
 
 If neither comfortable nor pleasing to the eye, the various 
 churches grouped in St Giles', possessed in former times an 
 
S^ Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 amusing difference of character. * The High Church,' says 
 the author of the Traditions of Edinburgh, 'had a sort of 
 dignified aristocratic character, approaching somewhat to 
 prelacy, and was frequented only by sound church-and-state 
 men, who did not care so much for the sermon, as for the 
 gratification of sitting in the same place with His Majesty's 
 Lords of Council and Session, and the magistrates of Edin- 
 burgh, and who desired to be thought men of sufficient 
 liberality and taste to appreciate the prelections of Blair. 
 The Old Church, in the centre of the whole, was frequented 
 by people who wished to have a sermon of good divinity, about 
 three-quarters of an hour long, and who did not care for the 
 darkness and dreariness of their temple. The Tolbooth 
 Church was the peculiar resort of a set of rigid Calvinists 
 from the Lawnmarket and head of the Bow, termed the Tow- 
 buith Whigs, who loved nothing but extempore evangelical 
 sermons, and would have considered it sufficient to bring the 
 house down about their ears, if the precentor had ceased, for one 
 verse, the old hillside fashion of reciting the lines of the psalm 
 before singing them, Dr Webster was long one of the clergy- 
 men of this church, and deservedly admired as a pulpit orator.' 
 
 As a type of the places of worship inconveniently crammed 
 within the nave and aisles of St Giles' a hundred years ago, 
 the Tolbooth Church became a subject for the satirical pencil 
 of Kay, a notable Edinburgh caricaturist. His sketch is 
 entitled ' A Sleepy Congregation.' The idea is conveyed of a 
 church of limited dimensions, with a gallery, crowded in all 
 its parts without an inch of free space, for even the passages 
 were provided with benches, which were let down on hinges 
 for sitters as soon as the clergyman entered the pulpit. Two 
 of the heavy stone pillars that were never designed for a church 
 of this kind, stood inconveniently among the seats. One of 
 them was so directly in front of the preacher, as to cause some 
 difficulty in managing the voice. 
 
 Mr W. Browne, who is a surviving member of the congre- 
 
Sf Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 gation as it existed in the early years of the present century, 
 has written Notes and Recoiled mis of the Tolbooth Church, 
 printed for private circulation, in which is given an amusing 
 account of the state of affairs. We have space for only one 
 particular. ' The walls were dingy in colour, and seemed to 
 have dust resting on every available place. On one occasion, 
 when either Mr Whitefield or Mr Simeon preached, he noticed 
 a large cobweb which had been placed at a height above the 
 reach of ordinary besoms, and remarked : " That is the very cob- 
 web which I saw when I was last here " — so many years ago.' 
 
 What will strike every one with surprise is, that throughout 
 the eighteenth and the early years of the present century 
 there should have been such a general acquiescence in the 
 odious internal condition of St Giles' Church. Arnot, the 
 historian of Edinburgh, who wrote in 1779, and gives a list 
 of the congregations which then confusedly nestled in the 
 building, and must have suffered from the mass of decaying 
 mortality beneath their feet, has not a word of remonstrance 
 on the subject. There were accomplished men of letters in 
 Edinburgh at a still later period who are now reckoned among 
 national luminaries. Not one of them, as far as we know, 
 imagined there was anything wrong in the unseemly state of 
 St Giles'. They complacently saw before their eyes an edifice 
 abounding in some of the finest specimens of fifteenth-century 
 architecture degraded into a collection of wretchedly fetid 
 caverns. Lord Cockburn, in his Memorials, makes some re- 
 marks on the total want of taste which prevailed at this period. 
 Speaking of St Giles', he says : ' It might have been painted 
 scarlet without any one objecting.' But the same dearth of 
 taste as regards ecclesiastical structures and the comfort of 
 congregations prevailed almost everywhere until very recent 
 times. 
 
 Before it was despoiled, 1558-60, the vast interior of this 
 grand old building, with its many pillars and groined roof, 
 must have presented an appearance resembling that of a 
 
Sf Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 spacious English cathedral of the olden class. The policy of 
 cutting up and apportioning this handsome structure, on which 
 so much architectural taste had been lavished, is inexcusable. 
 The transformation was effected in a manner altogether taste- 
 less. No care was taken to preserve the finer parts of the 
 architecture. Rows of fluted pillars sustaining lofty arches 
 were merged in the rough walls which were erected lengthwise 
 and crosswise to form the several compartments. The foliated 
 bases and capitals of pillars were hacked without mercy to bring 
 them within the required line. Characteristic heads carved 
 among the foliage were knocked off with hammers, and are 
 found buried in rubbish beneath the floor. The erection of 
 galleries in all the churches caused further dilapidation, as 
 cavities for beams to sustain these galleries were dug in the 
 sides of several pillars. 
 
 Under the authority of successive acts of Parliament, the 
 municipality of Edinburgh was extended, and churches for new 
 parochial divisions were erected in various places at consider- 
 able cost to the civic corporation. Nevertheless, St Giles' 
 remained in the condition now described until the first quarter 
 of the nineteenth century. There were still four churches and 
 a Police Ofiice under one roof. In 1 817, by the removal of 
 small shops or * krames,' which had long existed within the 
 niches of the ancient building, the exterior had a very ragged 
 appearance. Public sentiment was roused. Something must 
 be done to renovate St Giles'. For several years the subject 
 received the consideration of the Town Council, and a plan for 
 remodelling the church, by Mr Burn, architect, was at length 
 adopted. The cost was to be about ;^2o,ooo, towards which 
 sum government contributed ^^i 2,600. Dr Laing gives a 
 ground-plan of St Giles', before it was touched by Mr Burn ; 
 but by a singular mistake of the artist in framing the scale of 
 feet, the building is represented as being about two hundred 
 and fifty feet long. Its true measurement was a hundred and 
 ninety-six feet in length within the walls, by a hundred and 
 
S^ Giles" Cathedral Church, 
 
 thirty feet wide at the transepts. The ground-plan we sub= 
 sequently offer shews its present dimensions and character. 
 
 Burn commenced his operations in 1829, and the work was 
 finished in 1833. On the south-west, two of the 'five chapels' 
 or aisles, contracted for in 1387, were removed, in order to 
 widen the entrance to the Parliament Square from the west, 
 while other alterations were made in this part of the building. 
 On the north side of the nave, two chapels were removed. 
 One of these, which adjoined the transept, says Daniel 
 Wilson, in his interesting Memorials of Edinburgh., ' was the 
 only portion of the church in which any of the coloured glass 
 remained, with which, doubtless, most of its windows were 
 anciently filled. Its chief ornament consisted of an elephant, 
 very well executed ; underneath which were the crown and 
 hammer, the armorial bearings of the Incorporation of Ham- 
 mermen, inclosed within a wreath. From these insignia, we 
 may infer that this was St Elois' Chapel, at the altar of which, 
 according to the traditions of the burgh, the craftsmen of Edin- 
 burgh, who had followed Allan, Lord High Steward of Scotland, 
 to the Holy Land, and aided in the recovery of the Holy 
 Sepulchre from the Infidels, dedicated the famous Blue Blanket, 
 or Banner of the Holy Ghost.' 
 
 Burn changed the entire exterior aspect of St Giles', the 
 spire alone excepted. Picturesque roofs and pinnacles dis- 
 appeared. The whole fabric was new cased in a bald style of 
 art. As concerns the interior, the sectioning into parts was 
 only modified. The choir remained as before. The southern 
 section of the building was fitted up for meetings of the General 
 Assembly ; but this appropriation not being found satisfactory, 
 the Old Church in a few years afterwards was here located. 
 The best thing done was the expulsion of the Police Office. 
 For it, was substituted a capacious lobby, common to 
 the several congregations, who all entered by one outer 
 door in the north transept. There was an alteration of 
 names. The Tolbooth Church and Haddo's Hole statutorily 
 
Si Giles" Cathedral Church. 
 
 vanish. The nave is occupied by the New North Church, 
 now designated West St Giles'. It is much to be deplored 
 that, in the course of this remodelling, the fine old monument 
 of the Earl of Murray, which had once been a place of 
 resort, and was otherwise interesting, was destroyed. ' It 
 might have been thought,' says Dr Laing, ' that such a 
 monument would have escaped any sacrilegious hand ; but 
 to the disgrace of our civic authorities, it was allowed to 
 be demolished, and the brass tablet, containing engraved figures 
 of Justice and Faith, with an inscription written by Buchanan, 
 was removed.' The brass tablet, however, was not lost. As 
 after described, it is to be seen on the modern monument of 
 the Earl of Murray. 
 
 So much for Mr Burn's improvements on St Giles'. By some, 
 they are thought to have made matters worse rather than better. 
 We are certainly left to lament that from whatever cause, he 
 took away or mutilated much that can never be replaced. 
 
 As regards the spire of St Giles', it dates from the twelfth 
 century, in which, as has been stated, the church was built. 
 Of this antiquity, there is sufficient evidence in the massive 
 substructure of octagonal pillars resembling those in the choir. 
 Injured by the fire in 1385, the spire participated in the 
 renovations that took place in the fifteenth century. It is 
 known to have been repaired without detriment to its original 
 character in 1648. And so it remains till the present day. 
 As will be seen from our frontispiece, it is a handsome 
 square structure, terminating in decorated arches and pinnacles, 
 producing the appearance of an imperial crown, and rising 
 to a height of one hundred and sixty-one feet. Billings, in 
 his pictorial work on the Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities 
 of Scotland, observes that of all the Scottish instances of 
 this species of structure, the spire of St Giles' ' is at once 
 the richest and the finest.' As far as we are aware, there is 
 nothing to compare to it in point of eftect in modern ecclesi- 
 astical architecture. 
 
Sf Gi/es' Cathedral Church. 
 
 The bells in St Giles' formed an important part of the ancient 
 establishment, but nowhere do we find any accurate description 
 of their number and character. There was, it seems, a bell 
 called the St Mary Bell, which was sold with certain church 
 furnishings in 1563. There still remained the 'great bell of 
 St Giles',' as it was called, which dated from 1460. This 
 bell is spoken of by historians and poets as being that which 
 was rung on special occasions, such as summoning the 
 inhabitants to assemble in military array for defence of the 
 city after the battle of Flodden. In one of Dunbar's satirical 
 poems, a dwarfish personage is introduced saying to the 
 citizens of Edinburgh : 
 
 * I come among you hier to dwell : 
 Fra sound of Sanct Gelis' bell 
 Nevir think I to flie.' 
 
 Referring to this famous old bell, Dr Laing says it 'was cast 
 in Flanders, and is described as having the arms of Guelder- 
 land upon diff"erent parts of it, together with figures of the 
 Virgin and Child, and other devices, and had the following 
 Latin inscription : " Honorabiles viri burgenses Villae 
 DE Edinburgh, in Scotia, hang Campanum, fieri fecerunt 
 Anno Dni : m.cgcc.lvv. [1460]. Johs et Wilhelmus 
 Hoerhen me fecerunt ; Ipsamque Campanum Gyelis 
 vocari voluerunt. Defungtos plango : Vivos vogo : 
 Fulmina franco." Translation — " The honourable men, 
 burgesses of the City of Edinburgh in Scotland, caused this 
 bell to be made in the year of our Lord one thousand four 
 hundred and sixty. Johannes and Wilhelm Hoerhen made me. 
 And they determined that I should be called Giles's bell. I 
 mourn the dead : I summon the living : I disperse the thunder." ' 
 The latter part of the inscription reminds us of ancient 
 usages and beliefs. ' I mourn the dead : ' This refers to the 
 solemn sounds of the passing-bell on the occasion of a death. 
 * I summon the living : ' This signifies the call to church, or to 
 
S^ Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 arms. * I disperse the thunder : ' Here is a testimony to the 
 old superstitious beUef that thunder could be dispersed by- 
 making loud noises with bells. A similar inscription is found 
 on many old church bells of large dimension. It would 
 seem that the strange notion that bells are efficacious in 
 dispelling storms is by no means extinct. In 1852, the Bishop 
 of Malta ordered the church bells to be rung for an hour 
 to allay a gale ! The old great bell in St Giles' unfortunately 
 suffered a fracture, and had to be recast, thereby obliterating 
 the inscription. Its modern representative was founded by 
 C. & G. Mears, London, in 1844. It measures four feet 
 six inches and a half in diameter across the mouth, and three 
 feet four inches in height. It is this bell on which the hours 
 are struck, and which is rung for public worship. Near 
 it are two lesser bells, or chimes, for striking the quarters, 
 respectively dated 1700 and 1728. 
 
 Situated in a dark corner, which is inapproachable without 
 the light of a lantern, we find an old bell, indeed the only 
 genuine old bell in St Giles', one that 
 
 has survived from pre-Reformation ^^ " ' ~^£^ ' ' l^_ 
 times. Although complete in its ^ " f ^-" 
 
 machinery for suspension and ringing, 
 it can no longer ring, for by some 
 accident it has lost its clapper, and 
 there it hangs mute, unnoticed, covered 
 with the dust of ages, a waif wrecked 
 on the stream of time. Shapely in 
 appearance, it measures seventeen and 
 a half inches in diameter, and thirteen 
 and a half inches high. According to 
 tradition, it is the original Vesper Bell 
 of St Giles' ; though possibly, judging 
 from the pious inscription it bears, it 
 may have been the Ave or Pardon Bell tolled before and after 
 divine service, to call the worshippers to a preparatory prayer 
 
 Vesper Bell. 
 
Si Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 to the Virgin before engaging in the solemnity, and an invo- 
 cation for pardon at its close. The following is the inscription 
 in black-letter capitals : ' O Mater Dei, Memento Mei : Anno 
 D.M.IIII.' Translation — ' O Mother of God, Remember me, 
 1504.' This unfortunate bell, a curious archaeological relic, 
 might be rung as of old were it provided with a new clapper. 
 Perhaps the present notice will lead to its resuscitation for 
 some useful purpose. 
 
 Besides these bells, there are twenty-three small music- 
 bells, and a set of eight chime-bells ; making the entire number 
 of thirty-five bells in St. Giles'. The music-bells are fitted on 
 a frame in the open or upper part of the spire, and played by 
 hand. These music-bells, which date from 1698, were until 
 lately played daily by a lady of advanced age, and are by 
 no means in a good condition. A thorough repair is requisite. 
 The eight chime-bells were erected so lately as 1858. From 
 the imperfect nature of the mechanism and the unsuitableness 
 of the place where they are situated, they are not played. 
 
 FIRST RESTORATION — THE CHOIR. 
 
 When the present writer had the honour of being Lord 
 Provost of Edinburgh, 1865-69, he had often occasion to 
 attend public worship officially with the other magistrates 
 and members of the Town Council. The place of assemblage 
 was the choir, or High Church, in the front of a gallery on 
 the north side, having the King's Pillar on the right, and 
 the half-pillar with the Cranston arms on the left. In the 
 corresponding gallery on the south were the seats for the 
 judges of the Supreme Court of Scotland. Intermediately, 
 in front of the great east window, was a huge dark pulpit, 
 with a lofty sounding-board; such being the pulpit from 
 which Hugh Blair delivered his admired sermons a hundred 
 years ago. At the west end of the church was the gallery 
 with the Royal pew. It was a homely structure, consisting 
 of a light blue-painted canopy, supported by four wooden 
 
S^ Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 posts, over a few tawdry arm-chairs. The technical name 
 of this kind of structure is a baldachino. No one could 
 look at it without being reminded of a four-post bed. Here 
 George IV. was seated when he attended church on his 
 visit to Edinburgh, 1822; and here for two Sundays every 
 year sat the Lord High Commissioner to the General 
 Assembly. The whole seating of the church was of plain 
 deal. A cram of old-fashioned pews from floor to ceiling. 
 There was a distressing mustiness in the atmosphere, which 
 ventilation failed to remedy, for the ground was saturated 
 with human remains, which ought long since to have been 
 removed as dangerous to the health of the congregation. 
 
 There and then, when seated in that elevated gallery close 
 to the carved shields of the boy-prince James and his mother 
 the inestimable Mary of Gueldres, we conceived the idea of 
 attempting a restoration of the building, and producing a 
 church in which the people of Edinburgh might feel some 
 pride — a shrine fitting for the devotional exercises of Royalty. 
 It would cost some trouble. But what good thing is ever 
 done without trouble? There would be no harm in trying. 
 Shortly afterwards, we called a meeting to take the matter 
 into consideration, ist November 1867. The scheme was 
 generally approved ; but difficulties interposed, and it was 
 laid aside until 187 1, when with recovered health and more 
 leisure, it could be prosecuted with a better chance of success. 
 At a public meeting, a Restoration Committee was appointed, 
 with the present writer as Chairman. The object of the 
 Committee was eventually to restore as far as practicable 
 the whole interior of St Giles', but to effect this step by step 
 as circumstances permitted, and to confine operations in the 
 first place to the choir. The idea of thoroughly restoring 
 an edifice so damaged by alterations was hopeless. But much 
 might be done. The intervening walls could be taken down. 
 The pillars might be mended. With patience, the outlay of 
 money, and the concurrence of the civic and ecclesiastical 
 
 xU 
 
Sf Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 authorities, the building could probably be brought back to 
 something like what it had been in long-past times. 
 
 The efforts to gather subscriptions for the object in view 
 were at first as successful as could be expected. Her Majesty 
 the Queen headed the hst with a subscription of ^200. The 
 
 Pulpit. 
 
 Town Council of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Surgeons, 
 the Societies of High Constables of Edinburgh and Holyrood, 
 and the Society of Writers to the Signet, were among the public 
 bodies who subscribed liberally. Nobility and gentry of all 
 denominations contributed to facilitate an object which was 
 felt to be national in its character. In June 1872, when the 
 
 xlii 
 
Sf GiVes' Cathedral Church. 
 
 amount of subscriptions had reached ;^2ooo, the Committee, 
 with consent of the authorities concerned, felt warranted in 
 commencing the work. The galleries which disfigured the 
 building were wholly removed, thereby developing the fine old 
 pillars, which were mended with stone to resemble the original. 
 The baldachino and the furniture of the Royal pew were taken 
 away as crown property. All the pews and the pulpit were 
 removed. When everything was gone, the floor was trenched 
 
 Royal Pew. 
 
 throughout to a depth of several feet. No vaults were dis- 
 covered, but there was an immense quantity of human remains, 
 which were taken away in hearses and decently buried in a 
 churchyard. A number of large grave-stones were removed 
 that had served as pavement, on which the professional devices 
 of craftsmen were rudely carved. These slabs were put at the 
 disposal of a corporate body representing the craftsmen of 
 Edinburgh. As a final act, the walls and groined roof of the 
 choir were cleaned, and rendered pleasing to the eye. 
 
•S/* Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 Under direction of Mr W. Hay, architect, the process of 
 renewal according to a style of art appropriate to the char- 
 acter of the building, was now commenced. The passages 
 were laid with Minton tiles bearing antique Scottish de- 
 vices. A pulpit of Caen stone exquisitely carved by Mr 
 John Rhind, an Edinburgh sculptor, was placed against the 
 pillar on the south side nearest the east window. All the 
 seatings were of oak. The seats for the magistrates and for the 
 judges bore appropriate carvings. The Royal pew at the west 
 end, raised above the general level, was a highly ornamental 
 structure, with suitable devices. The cost of the Government 
 pews, including the Royal pew, and pews for the judges, alone 
 cost the sum of ;i^i586, towards which the Treasury made a 
 grant of ;^5oo. Altogether the cost of restoring the choir, as 
 now described, including the expense of heating by hot-water 
 pipes, amounted to ^^4490. The subscriptions actually 
 realised fell short of that sum to the extent of ;^65o, which 
 deficiency was made good by the Chairman and several mem- 
 bers of Committee. Thus the transaction was closed. Through- 
 out the whole affair, the Committee owed much to the valuable 
 services of Mr Lindsay Mackersy, W.S., Honorary Secretary. 
 
 According to appointment, the choir, in its renovated form, 
 was opened for public worship on Sunday, 9th March 1873. 
 From the interest taken in the alterations, the church was 
 crowded. At the morning and afternoon services, the judges, 
 magistrates, and various public bodies attended in official 
 costume, the spectacle being peculiarly effective. Latterly, 
 under the incumbency of the Rev. Dr J. Cameron Lees, the 
 church in its improved form has become one of the most 
 attractive in Edinburgh. 
 
 SECOND RESTORATION — SOUTHERN AISLES. 
 
 The choir in its restored state was still disfigured by three 
 arches, with blocked-up windows, forming the partition of 
 separation from the Preston Aisle on the south. To render 
 
 xliv 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 the restoration of the choir complete, it was obvious that there 
 must be a second step in the alterations which should embrace 
 the Preston Aisle and other aisles on the south. These 
 southern aisles, as already mentioned, had been used as the 
 Old Church, with windows overlooking the Parliament Square. 
 By an Act of Parliament, 1870, the Old Church parish was 
 dropped out of the statutory parochial divisions. The church 
 was occupied for a time on a temporary footing, and at length 
 disused. Such was the state of matters in 1878, and an oppor- 
 tunity was afforded of clearing out and restoring this portion of 
 the building. Plans prepared by Mr W. Hay were submitted 
 to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the Magistrates and 
 Council, and received their approval, but only under a guarantee 
 given by the present writer that he would be responsible for 
 the expense of the undertaking. In giving this guarantee, we 
 resolved to relieve the Restoration Committee of any further 
 trouble and responsibility, and to proceed entirely on our own 
 judgment and at our own cost. 
 
 In February 1879, this second restoration was begun by 
 removing the galleries and pews, taking down partitions and 
 staircases, lifting the floor, and opening up the aisles. By the 
 lifting of the floor, a hideous scene of decaying mortal remains 
 was disclosed, as afterwards referred to. In the soil of the 
 Preston Aisle, about a foot below the surface, was found a 
 leaden coffin, bearing the inscription, ' Brigadier Richart 
 Cunyngham, Died 26th Nov. 1697, ^tat 47.' The Brigadier 
 had probably been a connection of the Dick-Cunynghams, 
 baronets, of Prestonfield. The coffin was in an imperfect 
 condition, and has been left undisturbed. 
 
 After a general clearance, the first operations were directed 
 to the aisle founded by Chepman. This once elegant aisle 
 was in a revolting condition. The arch between it and the 
 Preston Aisle had been built up. It was divided into three 
 floors. The lower floor was degraded into a coal-cellar ; in the 
 middle floor was placed a tall iron stove for heating by means 
 
 xlv 
 
S^ Gilcs^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 of flues ; and the upper floor formed an apartment, with a fire- 
 place and other accessories. The floors were taken down, and 
 the whole interior cleared out. It was expected that the 
 remains of Montrose would be found in the coal-cellar; but 
 nothing of the kind was discovered. 
 
 When the thick wall that blocked up Chepman's Aisle was 
 removed, the fluted jambs sustaining the arch were found to be 
 
 much shattered. About 
 twelve feet of the jambs 
 on each side had been cut 
 away. A chimney had 
 been run right through the 
 key-stone of the arch. The 
 whole was repaired by in- 
 serting fresh hewn stone to 
 resemble the original. The 
 result has been a handsome 
 arch in the style of the 
 fifteenth century. The lath 
 and plaster which had been stuck on the walls of the aisle were 
 wholly removed, and the original character of the stone-work 
 was developed. A floor supported on 
 brick arches over a vault completed the 
 restoration. 
 
 In the process of cleaning the groined 
 roof of the aisle, which was begrimed with 
 dirt and coatings of whitewash, a finely 
 carved bosse was discovered, bearing the 
 arms of Walter Chepman impaled with 
 those of his first wife, who had belonged 
 to the family of Kerkettill. The joint 
 arms are on a shield held up by an angel. A corbel which 
 terminated the groining of the roof on the west side bore a 
 pious symbolic carving. It represents an eagle, the emblem of 
 St John the Evangelist ; the eagle, in sacred and legendary art, 
 
 xlvL 
 
 Chepman's Arms. 
 
 Emblem of St John. 
 
S^ Giles' Cathedral Church, 
 
 being the symbol of the highest inspiration, because St John 
 soared upwards to the contemplation of the divine nature of 
 the Saviour. Close to the eagle is a scroll legend in black- 
 letter, En :principia, being the two words with which the 
 gospel of St John in the Latin Vulgate begins — Li priiicipio 
 erat Verbum: ' In the beginning was the Word.' According to 
 the charter of endowment, Chepman dedicated the altar in his 
 chapel to St John, whom he had probably adopted as his 
 patron saint. The disclosing of these old carvings adds to the 
 archaeological interest in St Giles'. 
 
 It has been thought that as something is due to Chepman 
 for his service to literature, it would only be becoming to set 
 up a tablet with a suitable inscription to his memory. A 
 brass tablet accordingly is now placed in his aisle, bearing 
 the following inscription : ' To the Memory of Walter 
 Chepman, designated the Scottish Caxton, who under 
 
 THE auspices OF JaMES IV. AND HIS QUEEN MaRGARET, 
 introduced THE ART OF PRINTING INTO SCOTLAND 1507 ; 
 FOUNDED THIS AISLE IN HONOUR OF THE KiNG AND QuEEN 
 AND THEIR FAMILY 15x3; AND DIED IN 1532 ; THIS TABLET 
 IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY WiLLIAM CHAMBERS, LL.D., 
 1879.' 
 
 As a final improvement, the floor of the Chepman Aisle was 
 laid with encaustic tiles with suitable devices ; while its entrance 
 was closed by a fanciful grille in hammered iron after the 
 antique, with a gate. This tasteful work of art was executed by 
 Skidmore of Coventry. 
 
 The work on the Preston Aisle was the heaviest and 
 lengthiest part of the second restoration, for the aisle, which 
 abounds in artistic beauty, was in a sadly deteriorated condition. 
 The finest carvings had been recklessly broken. The groined 
 roof, on which immense labour had been expended by the 
 artificers employed by the magistrates of Edinburgh, in the 
 fifteenth century, was so thickly covered with whitewash as to 
 have no appearance of stone-work. The first thing done was 
 
 xlvii 
 
Sf Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 to clear the groined roof of its odious coatings. Months were 
 occupied on these repairs ; the result being that the roof of the 
 Preston Aisle, as now developed, perhaps excels in beauty of 
 groining anything of the kind in Great Britain, or in the world. 
 When the roof was finished, repairs were made on the pillars 
 which stand in a row betwixt the aisle and the choir. These 
 pillars had been seriously damaged by the insertion of beams 
 and otherwise. In some instances, the bases and the ornamental 
 capitals, with portions of the shafts, had to be replaced. The 
 wall part of the aisle was also repaired in a manner as nearly as 
 possible to resemble the original. A small arched recess or 
 shrine, which possibly had some connection with the altar set 
 up to commemorate Preston's munificence, was opened up in a 
 creditable style of art. It is not improbable that the recess 
 had been used as the shrine for the arm-bone of St Giles. 
 Last of all, the floor was laid with encaustic tiles ; and the 
 aisle, fitted up with ornamental oak pews, now affords accom- 
 modation for eighty sitters in addition to those in the choir. 
 The visitor is invited to look upon the Preston Aisle as a 
 wonderfully fine specimen of fifteenth-century art. It is the 
 gem of St Giles'. 
 
 In several parts of the Preston Aisle will be seen the arms of 
 Preston, three unicorns' heads, formerly referred to. On one 
 of the bosses on the groined ceiling is a shield bearing the arms 
 of Sir Patrick Hepburn of Hales, a trusted statesman, who was 
 created a peer with the title of Lord Hales, 1456. His grand- 
 son, Patrick, third Lord Hales, was created Earl of Bothwell by 
 James IV. His great-grandson was the infamous Earl of 
 Bothwell in the reign of Mary Queen of Scots. The arms on 
 the shield consist of two chevrons, each shewing two lions 
 plucking at a rose. 
 
 Before quitting the Preston Aisle, visitors will observe a 
 baptismal font in Caen stone, executed by Mr Rhind, an 
 Edinburgh sculptor, on the model of Thorvvaldsen's famous 
 work at Copenhagen. It represents an angel wreathed with 
 
 xlviii 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 flowers, kneeling on one knee, holding a large shell, intended 
 to contain the water for baptism. The font, which has been 
 
 Baptismal Font. 
 
 presented to the church tlirough the munificence of a friend of 
 the Rev. Dr J. C. Lees, is at present placed in the Chepman 
 Aisle. 
 
 In repairing the Preston Aisle, it was found necessary to 
 build up the huge doorway in the eastern gable which had been 
 introduced by Mr Burn ; on which account, some alterations will 
 require to be executed in this quarter on the exterior of the 
 building. This will form one of the closing acts in the 
 work of restoration. 
 
 Previous to the repairs being executed, the spacious stone 
 arch which spans the west end of the Preston Aisle and 
 divides it from the south transept, was, as a result of Mr Burn's 
 proceedings, found to be fancifully clothed in stucco. This 
 stucco coating, which was wholly out of place, was removed, 
 and the simple beauty of the original stone arch has been 
 
 li xlix 
 
»S/ Gilcs^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 brought into view. Meanwhile, until the restorations are com- 
 pleted, the arch is closed by a wooden screen, the door in 
 which admits to the south transept and aisles. 
 
 The work of restoring the south transept and adjoining aisles 
 on the west, involved some excavations by which it was hoped 
 a discovery would be made of certain burial vaults that were 
 believed to be in this part of the building. A search for these 
 vaults took place on the loth April 1879. Only one vault was 
 discovered. It was that in which the Regent Murray was 
 entombed, 1569-70. It was situated close to the west wall of 
 the transept. The vault measured about sixteen feet in length 
 from north to south, and was little more than three feet in 
 width. The search was to a certain extent disappointing. No 
 coffin of any kind could be found containing the remains of the 
 illustrious Regent. Three leaden coffins were discovered in a 
 bad condition. The most perfect of these coffins, as seen by 
 the arms and inscriptions, contained the remains of Alexander, 
 fourth Earl of Galloway, born 1670, died 1690. The other 
 two leaden coffins bore neither arms nor inscriptions, and 
 seemed to pertain to persons of a slight figure. It was the 
 opinion of a medical authority present that the remains in one 
 of the coffins were those of a young man ; and that the remains 
 in the other were those of a female of middle age. Near these 
 leaden coffins was found a leaden plate, bearing the engraved 
 inscription, ' Francis Steuart, Esq., died at Rheims in France, 
 7th Octr. 1768, Aged 22.' The plate had probably been on a 
 wooden coffin that lay in fragments, and in which the leaden 
 coffin had been placed. The Francis Steuart referred to was a 
 son of the Hon. Francis Steuart of Pittendriech, third son of 
 Francis, sixth Earl of Moray. 
 
 The buiial vault of the Regent, as we learn by a notice in 
 the Edinburgh newspapers, under date January 23, 1830, had 
 been disturbed by the alterations then going on, and this may 
 account for the absence of any coffin recognisable as that per- 
 taining to the Regent To all appearance, a coffin of some 
 1 
 
Sf elks' Cathedral Church. 
 
 kind had been emptied of its contents, which now lay as a 
 confused heap of bones. A skull picked up from the heap was 
 viewed with much respect. Massive, and with craniological 
 indications of mental superiority, it was believed to be that of 
 the Regent Murray. Such, at least, was our own belief, and 
 that of one or two other persons present. The skull was care- 
 fully replaced in the heap of bones alongside the leaden coffins, 
 and to prevent intrusion, the vault was immediately built up. 
 
 Attempts to find other burial vaults during the excavations 
 of 1879 proved unsuccessful. On lifting the pavement of the 
 crypt eastward from the Regent's tomb, within the compass of 
 the south transept, there were seen two inclosures formed by 
 dwarf walls that might at one time have been vaults. They 
 were found to contain rubbish, with which a few bones of no 
 significance were mingled. The inclosure farthest to the east 
 was probably the vault in which the body of John, fourth Earl 
 of Athole, was entombed, 1579. 
 
 Descending by a few steps to the vault underneath the 
 Chepman Aisle, a rigorous search was now made for the 
 remains of the Marquis of Montrose, which had undoubtedly 
 been entombed here in i66i. No coffin nor any fragment of 
 coffin could be discovered. Only some small pieces of bones 
 were picked up from the soil. These we placed in a small 
 box, and reverently deposited it on the spot where the remains 
 of the Marquis had been ceremoniously interred. The floor 
 of the vault was then laid with pavement, in which was inserted 
 a marble tablet with the inscription, ' Montrose, 1661,' 
 
 The trenchings and the excavations that took place over the 
 floor of the southern aisles need not be particularly described. 
 The quantity of bones dug up was immense, the whole probably 
 amounting to five tons in weight. After examination, the 
 whole were placed in boxes, and removed to Greyfriars Church- 
 yard for interment. It was unsatisfactory to be driven to the 
 conclusion, that the vaults in which a number of distinguished 
 personages were entombed, had been rifled of the leaden coffins 
 
 li 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 with their contents in the course of alterations on this part of 
 the building, 1S29 to 1833, at which time the ancient and 
 historical tomb of the Earl of Murray was destroyed. The 
 strange disappearance of the remains of illustrious dead from 
 the spot in which by history and tradition they are said to have 
 been placed, raises a painful reflection regarding the indifference 
 to matters of this kind so lately as half a century ago. Only 
 in 1879 did the disappearance of the remains become known. 
 
 In the general work of restoration a commencement was 
 made by repairing the walls of that part of the transept which 
 projects like a recess southwards. The walls were in an 
 exceedingly bad condition, and to render them at all seemly, 
 portions were renewed with hewn stone. The floor, raised 
 two steps to give head-room in the crypt beneath, was laid with 
 encaustic tiles. A spacious stone arch, the fellow of that 
 adjoining the Preston Aisle, was stripped of its coating of 
 stucco, and by sundry mendings brought back to its original 
 condition. 
 
 The south transept, as now cleared out and embellished, 
 forms a recess of about twenty feet square. How it is to be 
 ultimately appropriated we know not. The design we permitted 
 ourselves to entertain was that it might perhaps be adopted as 
 the place of ceremonial assemblage by the Knights of the 
 ancient and noble Order of the Thistle, and where their banners 
 may be suitably displayed ; for since the Chapel Royal of 
 Holyrood fell into ruin, they have possessed no place of 
 installation, or where their banners could be shewn. 
 
 In the course of his operations, Mr Burn had made very 
 considerable havoc with the southern aisles. As already 
 mentioned, he had taken away two of these aisles with the 
 view of improving the access to the Parliament Square, and he 
 reduced a remaining aisle to half its dimensions. This reduced 
 aisle he transformed into a staircase in connection with certain 
 galleries of modern construction. The aisle in its original 
 state contained an ancient tomb, so called in Dr Laing's 
 m 
 
Sf Gives' Cathedral Church. 
 
 plan of the building ; and to accomiTiodate this relic of art, 
 he removed it eastwards into the wall of the staircase. 
 Obviously, anything like a restoration of this part of St Giles' 
 was impossible. The site of the missing aisles was part 
 of the public street. All that could be attempted was to 
 bring this portion of the building into harmony with the 
 Preston 'Aisle, the south transept, and other restored parts 
 of the structure. The diminished aisle with its flight of stairs 
 was cleared out. The wall that inclosed it was taken down, 
 and the open space on its north side was arched with stone ; 
 
 Mural Tomb or Shrine. 
 
 SO that when completed, there was a distinct new aisle as 
 a recess on the south, and which is now entitled the Moray 
 Aisle. 
 
 This Moray Aisle, forming an acquisition to the church, has 
 
 lui 
 
S^ ales' Cathedral Church. 
 
 been enriched in various ways. In the first place, the mural 
 tomb already spoken of was removed from its mean and 
 obscure position, and so elevated on the wall beneath the 
 window as to be in front of the spectator. The tomb is in 
 reality a shrine dedicated to the Passion of Christ, and the 
 wonder is how it escaped the wrath of the iconoclasts in 
 1558. Like the similar but less ornamental relic of art in 
 the choir, it consists of a Gothic arch over a level slab, on 
 which possibly there had been a recumbent figure. The 
 emblematic carvings are profuse and minute. They embody 
 
 Old Tablet, Earl of Moray's Tomb. 
 
 representations of the crown of thorns, the scourge, the nails, 
 the sponge, and other symbols of the Passion. In the removal 
 of the shrine, much care was taken to preserve the delicate 
 carvings, and accordingly this beautiful work of art may be 
 
 liv 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Church, 
 
 said to be very much what it was in the early part of the 
 sixteenth century. 
 
 Allusion has been made to a modern monument of the 
 Regent Murray. It stood on the west side of the south 
 transept. Its site, on examination, having been found to be 
 insecure, it was removed to the west side of the Moray Aisle, 
 which was in all respects more appropriate. The monument is 
 a wall structure of Caen stone, erected by the late John, twelfth 
 Earl of Moray, i864r. Near the top is placed the old brass 
 tablet, which, besides the arms of the Regent, with the motto, 
 Salus per Christum (Salvation through Christ), bears on one 
 side an emblematic figure of Faith or Piety, with the words, 
 PiETAS SINE viNDiCE LUGET (Piety mourns without defence); 
 on the other side a figure of Justice, with the words, Jus 
 EXARMATUM EST (Justicc has been disarmed). Date beneath, 
 '23 Januarii 1569,' followed by Buchanan's admired Latin 
 inscription : ' Jacobo Stovarto MoRAViiE comiti Scotia 
 
 PrOREGI VIRO ^TATIS SU^ LONGE OPTIMO ab inimicis 
 OMNIS MEMORI^ DETERRIMIS EX INSIDIIS EXTINCTO CEU PaTRI 
 
 coMMUNi Patria mcerens posuit.' Translation : ' To James 
 Stewart, Earl of Moray, Regent ,of Scotland, a man by far the 
 noblest of his time, barbarously slain by enemies, the vilest in 
 history; his country mourning has raised this monument as 
 to a common father.' 
 
 Adorned with this modern monument, the Moray Aisle has 
 been further enriched by filling the window with stained glass, 
 representing an important historical circumstance, the assas- 
 sination of the Regent, and the impressive scene at his inter- 
 ment in St Giles', with John Knox preaching the funeral sermon. 
 At the base of the window there is the inscription : ' In memory 
 of the Regent Murray ; presented by George Stuart, fourteenth 
 Earl of Moray, 1881.' 
 
 Closed in by a hammered iron grille by Skidmore of Coventry, 
 and laid with encaustic tiles, the Moray Aisle may be considered 
 the vestibule to the crypt and vaults already mentioned. The 
 
Si Oiks' Cathedral Church. 
 
 crypt, gained by a flight of steps and doorway, is lighted by 
 small Gothic windows to the south. 
 
 The work on the south aisles generally was completed by 
 mending the walls with hewn stone, and by laying pavement in 
 small squares. A new doorway, designed principally as an 
 entrance to the Judges of the Court of Session, but to be used 
 also as a door of exit, was constructed in the western gable. 
 The jambs and lintel of the doorway are in the fifteenth- 
 century style of Gothic art. The carvings over the door 
 embrace a royal Scottish shield bearing a lion rampant, environed 
 by the inscription : ' Robertus Secundus Rex Scotorum, 
 1387,' such being the date of construction of the southern 
 aisles by the community of Edinburgh. 
 
 One of the objects aimed at by the restoration of the building 
 has been to give an opportunity for the erection of monuments 
 to distinguished Scotchmen of past and future times. Where- 
 fore, St Giles', in a sense, might be viewed as the Westminster 
 Abbey of Scotland. In furtherance of this idea the wall of the 
 south aisles underneath the two windows has been prepared 
 and set aside for marble tablets commemorative of eminent 
 Scottish poets, beginning with the royal poet James I., author 
 of Peebles to the Play, Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, and 
 others. When the nave is opened up, portions of the walls will 
 be appropriated to monuments for distinguished historians, 
 statesmen, divines, lawyers, soldiers, scientific discoverers, 
 &c. 
 
 The restoration of the southern aisles was concluded, so far as 
 practicable, early in 1880. From first to last the work of 
 alteration had gone on very quietly, but not unnoticed. Great 
 numbers of visitors flocked to the building to see what had 
 been eflected, and we are glad to say that, including observa- 
 tions by the press, the feelings expressed .were those of general 
 approval. No prejudice had been roused. There were no 
 objections on the score of removing galleries prized by 
 traditions and recollections. A building that had for the last 
 
 Ivi 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 three hundred years been unsightly and repulsive, was now 
 seen to possess claims to artistic beauty, and to have become 
 an object of considerable attraction. Conducted purely on the 
 grounds of restoring a grand, old, historical monument, our 
 operations, happily, did not incur anything like the hostile 
 criticism that might have ensued had they been promoted 
 for denominational purposes. 
 
 Pleasing as the results may be, we have never disguised the 
 fact that the operations did not come up to what is called a 
 thorough restoration. Clearly, in the circumstances, such could 
 not have been attempted. We had no authority to deal with 
 the exterior of the building, nor to restore the ancient entrance 
 porches. Mr Burn, as already shewn, had removed much that 
 could not be brought back. Besides, in executing the restora- 
 tions in the choir, the Committee in charge of the works 
 were embarrassed by a short-coming of funds. At the same 
 time, let it be understood that there has not on any occasion 
 been a pedantic attempt to imitate what was old without suffi- 
 cient grounds for doing so. The restoration of ancient struc- 
 tures must be accepted under reasonable qualifications. Modern 
 science and art, if only for sanitary reasons, must be taken into 
 account. Accordingly, in all that concerns ventilation, heating, 
 and artificial lighting, the restored St Giles' will be found 
 immensely in advance of its prototype of the fifteenth century. 
 For example, in the matter of artificial lighting, we could not 
 have left the congregation to depend on candles and oil-lamps 
 according to the fashion of by-gone ages. Nor could we have 
 neglected artificial lighting altogether, as has been the case with 
 certain restored ecclesiastical buildings ; for that would have 
 been to render the church valueless for public worship in the 
 evening, and on Sunday afternoons during the winter. A com- 
 promise in the sentiment of restoration was therefore indis- 
 pensable. The whole church is lighted with gas by means of 
 brass standards from the floor, with ornamentation after the 
 antique, the effect being very satisfactory. 
 
 Ivii 
 
St Giks* Cathedral Church. 
 
 THIRD RESTORATIONS — THE NAVE. 
 
 When the restoration of the southern aisles was completed to 
 the extent described, there still remained to be put in decent 
 order the whole of the nave, the Albany Aisle, with other aisles 
 on the north side of the building, and the whole of the transepts 
 except the portion on the south. Such will be the third step 
 in the restoration of St Giles'. And to give an idea of its 
 extent, we refer to the following wood-engraving, which 
 represents a ground-plan of the building as it now exists. 
 
 parliame:n t 
 
 SOUTH 
 
 SQUARE 
 
 Ground-plan of St Giles'. 
 
 From this plan it appears that the whole edifice measures a 
 hundred and ninety-six feet in length within the walls, by a 
 hundred and twenty-five feet across at the transepts. The nave 
 may be spoken of as about a hundred and twenty feet square 
 in measurement. To effect a restoration of the nave and parts 
 
 Iviii 
 
iS/ Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 adjoining will involve some heavy work, with a number of 
 delicate details connected with the arches and pillars. Certain 
 stone and lime walls which block up arches will need to be 
 removed in order to open up the entire structure from end to 
 end and from side to side, and thus, if possible, to bring back 
 the interior of St Giles' to that architectural state it possessed 
 
 Albany Aisle. 
 
 previous to the Reformation. The bulky partition walls here 
 alluded to are principally those which had been removed by 
 command of Charles I. on the institution of the bishopric of 
 Edinburgh in 1633, but which were re-erected on the resump- 
 tion of Presbytery in 1639. 
 
 liz 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 One of the contemplated improvements is the opening up of 
 the western doorway of the nave (at present shut up), and con- 
 stituting it the principal entrance to the entire cathedral church. 
 Some characteristic architectural ornaments will be executed 
 over this the great doorway, to express the date of the building, 
 1 1 20, in the reign of Alexander I,, king of Scots; for strange to 
 say, if any such date was ever sculptured on the walls of St 
 Giles', it has long since been obliterated. 
 
 Among the lesser but essential improvements will be the 
 restoration of the stone arches and pillars in the nave and 
 its aisles. The painted stucco ornaments which form the 
 capitals of the pillars will be replaced by carved ornaments in 
 stone. A special satisfaction will be experienced in restoring 
 the Albany Aisle to its original artistic beauty. This interesting 
 aisle, hitherto shrouded from observation, occupies the north- 
 west corner of the nave, and causes a projection into High 
 Street. 
 
 In the centre of this beautiful aisle stands a light and 
 graceful pillar, which sustains a groined roof all around. The 
 aisle takes its name from Robert, Duke of Albany, the second 
 son of King Robert II., who, having been intrusted with the 
 custody of his nephew, David, Duke of Rothesay, cruelly 
 starved him to death in 'a dungeon in the castle of Falkland, 
 1402. Though escaping punishment for this atrocious act, 
 Albany and his prime associate, Archibald, fourth Earl of 
 Douglas, seem to have been haunted with a consciousness of 
 guilt. According to the practice of the period, they are said to 
 have built the Albany Aisle in St Giles' as a chapel expiatory 
 of their crime. The capital of the pillar in the centre of the 
 aisle bears two shields. One of these bears the Albany arms, 
 in which the Scottish lion is quartered with the fess cheque of 
 the Stewarts. The other shield has the heart and other 
 armorial bearings of the Earl of Douglas. This remarkably 
 fine pillar, surviving as a memento of a terrible tragedy in 
 Scottish history, and of the remorse which it occasioned, has 
 
 Ix 
 
Sf Giles^ Cathedral Church. 
 
 for ages been almost buried and lost amidst the gallery and 
 seating of the church. 
 
 The steps taken towards proceeding with these concluding 
 restorations may now be adverted to. The nave being occupied 
 as a church by the congregation of West St Giles', nothing 
 could be done in the way of alteration until another church was 
 provided. This was a matter in which we could not possibly 
 interfere; the solution of the difficulty lay with the public 
 authorities, whom we addressed on the subject. Early in 1879, 
 while still engaged in restoring the southern aisles, we made an 
 offer to the Town Council and Magistrates, and to the Edin- 
 burgh Ecclesiastical Commissioners, to restore the whole of 
 this ancient, historical building at our own expense, provided 
 we were put in possession of the nave not later than Whit- 
 sunday 1880. The offer was entertained by the citizens, and 
 steps were taken to secure its acceptance. 
 
 The first thing done was to procure an Act of Parliament to 
 sanction the removal of the West St Giles' Congregation. By 
 this Act, obtained in August 1879, ^^^ which received the 
 approval and support of government, it was stipulated that 
 upon payment of ;!^io,5oo, the West St Giles' Congregation 
 should be bound within a year to vacate the building and 
 provide a new church for themselves. Thereafter a Committee, 
 under the auspices of the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and 
 Council, was formed to collect subscriptions for the purpose 
 of fulfilling the condition of the Act of Parliament. 
 
 As the proposed restoration was national and unsectarian 
 in its object, the Committee was composed of gentlemen of 
 different rehgious denominations, and through their instrumen- 
 tality, as at Whitsunday 1880, contributions to the amount of 
 about ;^52oo were received or promised. There being, how- 
 ever, still a large deficiency, we, on being applied to, were 
 induced to extend the time for collection for one year — namely, 
 till Whitsunday i88i — but only on condition that if the full sum 
 
Si Giles' Cathedral Church. 
 
 irequired should not be then collected, our offer was to be with- 
 drawn, and was not to be renewed. Along with this offer a 
 proviso was made which it is necessary to explain. 
 
 There being no official authorities in the form of a dean and 
 chapter who could regulate various matters connected with 
 St Giles' in its complete state, we made a stipulation to the 
 following effect — That to facilitate arrangements for the erection 
 of monuments to distinguished Scotchmen in St Giles', to 
 regulate the introduction of coloured-glass windows, and for 
 managing the interior of the building after the restoration, 
 the Town Council would be expected to concur in appointing 
 a committee of management, which we had formerly specified 
 for these special purposes. 
 
 It would be needless to recount the various steps taken, some 
 of them under difficulties, to gather subscriptions sufficient to 
 complete the required sum of ;z^ 10,500. It is enough to say, 
 that the Magistrates and Council, assisted by Mr Robert Adam, 
 City Chamberlain, made a decisive effort for the purpose in 
 February 1881, and were materially aided by an auxiliary 
 Committee composed of leading members of the Church of 
 Scotland, headed by the Right Hon. Lord Justice-General. 
 These united efforts were so successful that there can be no 
 doubt the entire sum required will be obtained by the appointed 
 date, Whitsunday 1881. As regards the stipulation above hinted 
 at, it has been amply secured by the united consent of the 
 Magistrates and Council, the Kirk Session of the High Church, 
 and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. All that remains to be 
 done is to pay the money; after which it will be a mere 
 matter of adjustment when the West St Giles' Congregation 
 will remove, and the work of restoring the nave be allowed 
 to proceed. One thing is certain : when the keys of this part 
 of the building are put into our hands, not an hour will be lost 
 in commencing this important undertaking. And may God 
 grant us life and health to carry it to a successful issue. 
 
 w. c. 
 
 Ixii 
 
iS/ Gilei Cathedral Church. 
 
 Postscript.— As preparatory to the required restorations in the 
 nave and transepts, Messrs Hay and Henderson, architects, have 
 made a thorough survey of St Giles', embracing measurements of 
 every part, with the view of making a set of plans, elevations, and 
 sections of the whole fabric. By this means specifications will be 
 drawn up of what is intended to be done, or what may be properly 
 attempted. Such specifications will be submitted to the pubUc 
 authorities. 
 
 NOTE, 
 
 THE MEMORIAL WINDOWS IN ST GILES'. 
 
 St Giles' is known to have possessed at least some coloured-glass windows 
 previous to the Reformation, but they had long since disappeared ; and 
 their re-introduction required a new and special effort. The windows 
 throughout the Church are uniform in style and character. They 
 may be described as a blending of the perpendicular and flamboyant 
 styles of Gothic art, with cross bars or transoms dividing the windows 
 into upper and lower lights. They are therefore well adapted for 
 admitting illustrations of different subjects, or of a subject in several 
 parts. On the occasion of restoring the choir, the introduction of 
 stained glass received the attention of a special Committee. The design 
 entertained was that all the windows in the choir should refer exclusively to 
 events in the history of Our Lord. This plan has accordingly been carried 
 out, by the gifts of private individuals. The subject of each window was 
 prescribed. No heraldic or extraneous devices were allowed to be introduced. 
 But the donors were permitted to place a memorial inscription of a single 
 line at the foot of their respective windows. The result has been entirely 
 satisfactory. 
 
 The following is a list of the Memorial Windows ifi the choir. They were 
 executed by James Ballantine and Son, under the honorary supervision of 
 R. Herdman, R.S.A. 
 
 First Window. — The Nativity, and Holy Family ; the Presentation in the 
 Temple ; The Flight into Egypt ; Disputation with the Doctors. — In 
 memory of James Monteith, merchant, Calcutta, died 1872. Erected by his 
 brother, Duncan Monteith, 1874. 
 
 Ixiii 
 
S^ cues' Cathedral Church. 
 
 Second Windotv. — The Baptism of Our Lord ; the CalHng of the Apostles ; 
 First Miracle at Cana ; Healing the Sick. — In memory of James Richardson, 
 merchant, Edinburgh, died 1868. Erected by his widow and children, 1875. 
 
 Third Window. — Christ blessing little Children ; Stilling of the Tempest ; 
 Healing of the Blind ; Raising of Lazarus. — In memory of Dean of Guild 
 Lorimer, who perished when rendering help at a fire in 1865. Erected by 
 his widow and family. 
 
 Fourth Windoiv. — Christ's Entry into Jerusalem ; Christ purging the 
 Temple ; Christ commending the poor Widow at the Treasury ; Christ 
 preaching daily in the Temple. — In memory of Robert Stevenson, Engineer 
 to the Northern Light-houses, died 1850. Erected by his sons, 1875. 
 
 Fifth Window (East gable). — The Last Supper ; Christ's Agony in the 
 Garden ; Betrayal ; Bearing the Cross. — Gift of William Law, Lord Provost 
 of Edinburgh, 1869 to 1872. 
 
 Sixth Windoiv (Great East Window). — The Cnicifixion, with numerous 
 figures ; Ascension, with eleven apostles grouped. — Presented by the 
 Right Hon. Sir James Falshaw, Baronet, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, 1872 
 to 1877. 
 
 Seventh Windoiv. — Angels announcing the Resurrection to the Marys at 
 the Sepulchre ; the Appearance of Our Lord to Mary Magdalene, to 
 St Thomas and the Disciples. — In memory of Robert Smith, S.S.C., died 
 1875. Erected by his relatives and friends. 
 
 Eighth Window, being first in south wall. — Parable of Good Samaritan ; 
 Parable of Prodigal Son. — In memory of James Webster, S.S.C, died 1879. 
 
 Ninth Windoiu. — Parables of the Ten Virgins, and of the Talents. — In 
 memory of Alexander Clapperton, merchant, Edinburgh, died 1849, and 
 Anne Hume, his wife, died 1873. Erected by their sons, John and 
 Alexander Clapperton, 1876. 
 
 THE CLERESTORY WINDOWS IN CHOIR. 
 
 These windows ai^e appropriated to the arms of the Craftsmen of Edin- 
 burgh. Those of the Wrights and Masons, Painters and Glaziers, Baxters, 
 and the High Constables, are already put up. 
 
 Window in the Moray Aisle representing the assassination of the Earl 
 of Murray, and the preaching of his funeral sermon by John Knox. — Pre- 
 sented by the present Earl of Moray. This admired window has also been 
 executed by James Ballantine and Son. 
 Ixiv 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE L 
 
 HEATHEN SCOTLAND TO THE INTRODUCTION 
 OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 By the Rev. James Cameron Lees, D.D., St Giles' Cathedral 
 (High Kirk), Edinburgh. 
 
 T T has, as some of you know, been proposed to have a series of 
 Lectures upon Scottish ecclesiastical history from the earliest 
 times down to the present day, to be given by various well- 
 known ministers in this ancient church. It is to be hoped that 
 this course will be both interesting and instructive. The lectures 
 are delivered here without infringing upon our ordinary hours 
 of public worship, and will I believe be thoroughly in accord- 
 ance with the spirit of the day of rest and prayer. Nothing 
 surely can have a more religious tendency, and be more calcu- 
 lated to awaken in the mind sentiments truly religious than to 
 trace the progress of Christianity in our land from the barbarism 
 of the prehistoric age, to the light and civilisation of the 
 present day; from where it triumphed over heathen temples and 
 overthrew the shrines of heathen gods, to its influence in our 
 own time, and its power as a chief factor in the civilisation 
 
2 Sf Gi/es' Lectures, 
 
 of the nineteenth century. We all know how deeply interesting 
 is the book of Acts, which tells of the commencement of the 
 Christian church, and its conflict with Roman, Greek, and other 
 religions. Every account of its progress since that time is a 
 sequel to that book, and shews us how the river of whose rise 
 that book tells has flowed onward, like the stream described by 
 Ezekiel, making waste places glad, and changing desolation and 
 barrenness into fertility. The history of the church in Scotland, 
 like that of the civil history of this same country, is full of 
 romance, of stirring scenes, and of most picturesque and weird 
 effects. These will doubtless be dwelt upon in turn ; but what 
 the devout mind will see and reverently admire is, that amid 
 many changes and overturnings there has been a steady progress 
 on the whole, and evidence of an overruling power causing all 
 things to work together for good. To be able to recognise 
 this, it is necessary to take a view, not of one portion, but of 
 the whole history of our country's faith, to review the causes 
 that have been at work for generations — to trace them in their 
 operation from age to age down to the present hour. All know 
 that Scotchmen have been made in great measure what they 
 are by their national religion ; its story, too little known, ought 
 therefore to prove attractive. That it will be so in the hands 
 of those who tell it I cannot doubt. It could not be told in a 
 more suitable place than in this church, with which so many 
 historic associations are connected. 
 
 I have been honoured by those who have instituted this 
 course by being asked to give the introductory lecture. It 
 seems to me that I can best discharge this duty by bringing 
 before y^u, so far as can be ascertained, the state of Scotland 
 at the advent of Christianity, when those influences, of which 
 subsequent lectures will give a full account, first began to 
 tell on our country, and which, reaching down to the present 
 day, have created and moulded our national and religious life. 
 
 The materials for forming an estimate of the state of pre- 
 
Heathen Scotland. 3 
 
 Christian Scotland are of the very scantiest character. Few 
 monuments of those dark ages which preceded the coming 
 to our land of Christian teachers have come down to us. There 
 is almost nothing in the discoveries or treasures of archaeology ; 
 neither temple nor sacrificial knife nor altar, from which we can 
 glean an idea of what the religion of our Scottish forefathers 
 was. The little that we can learn is chiefly from Christian 
 historians, who describe the conflict of their religion with 
 heathendom, and who incidentally tell somewhat of those rites 
 and superstitions from which the first converts to the new faith 
 were delivered. But as these historians wrote after Christianity 
 had obtained a firm hold upon the country and people, it is 
 difficult to say how much of what they relate may be relied 
 upon. St Patrick, St Columba, St Cuthbert, are Christian 
 heroes whose lives are glorified with a halo of miracle and 
 romance. It is not easy to discriminate between what is legend 
 and what is fact in the story of their words and deeds. Some 
 slight knowledge of Christianity had apparently been previously 
 imparted through the Roman occupation, and also through the 
 preaching of St Ninian. 
 
 When Christianity first made itself felt as a permanent 
 power in these lands, the country we now call Scotland was 
 divided into four kingdoms. To the north of the line of the 
 Forth and Clyde lay the kingdoms of the Scots and Picts, 
 separated from one another by a mountain chain called by the 
 old writers, Dorsum Britannise or Drumalban. The kingdom 
 of the Scots comprehended generally what are now called the 
 counties of Argyll and Bute and Arran. That of the Picts, 
 those of Orkney and Shetland, Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, 
 Inverness, Perth, and Fife. The part of Scotland to the south 
 of the line of the Forth and Clyde was divided between two 
 other kingdoms — those of the Britons of Strathclyde, and the 
 Saxons of Northumbria. The territory of the Britons extended 
 southwards from the Clyde to the river Derwent in Cumber- 
 land. It comprehended part of Cumberland and Westmore- 
 
4 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 land, and the counties of Dumfries, Lanark, Ayr, Renfrew, and 
 Peebles. To the east of this kingdom was that of the Saxons 
 or Angles, which included Northumberland, Berwick, Roxburgh, 
 East-Lothian, and perhaps Mid-Lothian, where then, as now, 
 there stood the strong fortified position that still bears the name 
 of the Saxon King Edwin — Edwinsbruch. Galloway was occu- 
 pied by a colony of Picts.^ 
 
 The Scots were the descendants of a colony of Irish who in 
 the fifth century had settled along the western coast of Scot- 
 land, and who were in close connection with their mother- 
 country of Ireland. The Picts were the ancient Caledonians, 
 that fierce people of whom we have an account from the 
 Roman historians — men of red hair and large limbs, who had no 
 walled cities, who lived by pasturage and the chase, who fought 
 in chariots and painted their bodies with pictures of wild 
 animals, and who could stand for days immersed in the waters 
 of their marshes.^ The Britons were the native Celtic race, who 
 had been colonised by the Romans, and who called themselves 
 Roman citizens. They had received some knowledge of 
 Christianity at a very early period ; but apparently after the 
 withdrawal of the Romans they relapsed into Paganism.^ 
 The Saxons were the Teutons from Hanover and Friesland, 
 who had made a settlement on the eastern coast, and who 
 were continually trenching on the territory of their neighbours. 
 
 The language of the Scots, and probably also of the Picts,* 
 was that which is now known as the Gaelic. That of the 
 Britons still lingers in Wales. That of the Saxons or Angles is 
 
 1 The four old kingdoms are referred to by more than one early historian. 
 In a poem relating to the labours of St Columba, it is said : 
 
 ' The people of Alba to the Ictian Sea, 
 The Gaedhil cruithneans, Saxons, Saxo-Brits. 
 Best of men was the man who went [to them].' 
 
 See also Bede, c. 14. 
 
 2 Dion Cassius. ^ Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 157. 
 * Mr Skene seems to have shewn this conclusively. 
 
Heatheji Scotland. 5 
 
 represented by the English tongue. Each of these kingdoms 
 had its capital — a fortress of great strength, the seat of govern- 
 ment, where the king resided. The capital of the Scots was at 
 Dunadd, a rocky eminence near the Crinan Canal. That of 
 the Picts, at the commencement of the Christian period, was 
 near the mouth of the river Ness — probably the height called 
 Craig Patrick, near the modern town of Inverness.^ The 
 capital of the Britons was at Alcluith or Dumbarton, and that 
 of the Saxons at Bamburgh on the Northumbrian shore. 
 
 Between these races there was continual warfare. Like all 
 barbarians, they delighted in the chase and martial achieve- 
 ments. Their annals, such as they are, are the record of petty 
 feuds. The northern Caledonians hunted the deer, the boar, 
 and the wolf. They navigated lake and sea in canoes made 
 out of a hollow tree, such as are still occasionally dug up out of 
 the morasses ; or in boats made of wicker-work covered with 
 the skins of animals, like those that are still used in some parts 
 of the west of Ireland. They had advanced a certain stage in 
 civilisation. They had emerged from the stone and bronze age, 
 were conversant with the use of metals, and the Britons at least 
 had local government in a more or less organised form. Pro- 
 bably the nearest resemblance to the northern Scot may be 
 found in an African tribe of the present day, with its scattered 
 villages and head township strongly fortified, where the king 
 resides. 
 
 The religion of the two northern kingdoms, those of the Picts 
 and the Scots, seems to have been very much the same in 
 its character. We can only form an idea of what it was from 
 the history of the early Christian missionaries. Holding a high 
 place among both Scots and Picts, was a class of men called 
 Druids. They are mentioned frequently in the lives of St 
 Columba and St Patrick ; and in the ancient Celtic manuscripts 
 
 1 See Adamnan's account of St Columba's visit to King Brude. 
 
6 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 which have come down to us from Irish sources, Druids appear 
 to have held a distinct position in connection with the rehgious 
 Hfe of the people such as it was. They resided at the residence 
 of kings, and they exercised great power in national affairs. 
 An order of priests bearing this name inhabiting Gaul and 
 Southern Britain has been described by the Roman historians 
 with considerable minuteness. These Druids, according to 
 them, presided at sacrifices ; they were instructors of the young, 
 and were judges in all matters of controversy. They took no 
 part in war, nor were liable to pay taxes. They made use of 
 the Greek letters in writing. They inculcated the immortality 
 of the soul and its transmigration into different bodies. They 
 taught the youths astronomy, and 'much about the nature of 
 things and the immortal gods.' They used rites of augury from 
 the slaughter of a human victim, and dwelt in dense groves in 
 remote places. They taught in caves or hidden forests, and 
 they burned or buried with the dead what was most prized by 
 them when living. They considered the oak as the emblem of 
 the Almighty, and the misletoe was regarded with peculiar 
 veneration. It was detached from the parent tree by a golden 
 knife, and carried home with imposing ceremony. Csesar and 
 also Pliny have a good deal to say of these mysterious persons 
 the Druids, and they still furnish material for much antiquarian 
 and historic controversy. Into such controversy we cannot of 
 course enter. All that we have to say is, there is no trace of 
 any such organised priesthood existing in Northern Britain as 
 the Roman historians describe. 
 
 Whatever may be the degree of belief put in the legends 
 respecting the character and even the designation of the 
 Druids — supposing we go the length of saying there were never 
 any such persons — we are confronted with certain tangible me- 
 morials existing to this day of a religious or ceremonial observ- 
 ance unrecorded in history. There they are, and as rational 
 beings we are invited to account for them. Most probably, as 
 we venture to think, these memorials are the significant relics of 
 
Heathen Scotland. 7 
 
 a system of pagan worship which vanished on the introduction 
 of Christianity. We allude in a special manner to those mys- 
 terious circles and groups of stones of different dimensions, and 
 varied in their mechanical preparation, that are found in the 
 British Islands and in France, the Gaul of the Romans. The 
 grandest and most remarkable of these memorials is the well- 
 known Stonehenge in Wiltshire. Two others, less imposing, 
 but equally suggestive, are the standing-stones of Stennis in 
 Orkney, and of Callernish in the island of Lewis. Differing as 
 these circles do in some respects, they are clearly all of one 
 character. They have had the same meaning. They belong 
 to a people possessing a similarity in superstitious or symbolic 
 observance. 
 
 We are aware that the custom of fixing large stones in an 
 upright posture in the ground commemorative of men or im- 
 portant events is of prodigious antiquity in almost all nations. 
 Besides being found in Britain and continental Europe, these 
 monoliths are seen in Assyria, Persia, India, and Mexico. Such 
 memorials receive notice in the Old Testament. We read in 
 Judges, ix. 6, of Abimelech being made king 'by the pillar 
 which was in Shechem ; ' and in 2 Kings, xi. 14, of Joash, when 
 he was anointed king, standing * by a pillar, as the manner was.' 
 A like usage prevailed in ancient Britain when the king or chief 
 was elected. At Carnac in Brittany there is a surprisingly large 
 number of upright stones, not in circles, but in straight lines, 
 with a curved row at one end, while all around are seen 
 barrows and cromlechs. The whole had evidently been con- 
 nected with sepulchral, judicial, or other solemnities. In 
 Norway and the north-east of Scotland exist many rudely 
 sculptured stones which had been set up in a remote period of 
 paganism, but some of which had received carvings of Christian 
 symbols, such as the cross, after the diffusion of Christianity. 
 
 Let us not despise these rude testimonies, obscure though 
 they be, and of no recognisable value, according to ordinary 
 notions. There is something to touch the feelings in observing 
 
8 Si Giles" Lectures. 
 
 these sculptured records of an extremely ancient heathenism. 
 There is, indeed, always matter for elevating emotion in con- 
 templating objects of human art which carry us back to the 
 far-reaching past, into what might be called the infancy of 
 mankind. Uncouth as they are, there is a sentiment of good 
 in these old stones. We can at least say that at first sight 
 of the gigantic monoliths of Stonehenge, we experienced feel- 
 ings of awe akin to those which usually occur on coming in 
 presence of the Pyramids. We saw before us the relics of 
 a huge work of art, exceUing all similar constructions in Britain, 
 and the age of which could not reasonably be deemed less 
 than three thousand years, a stretch of time that takes us 
 back to the era of Moses, the venerated lawgiver of Israel. 
 Nor, in looking at Stonehenge, standing as it does in melan- 
 choly solitude, were our emotions of a less solemnising nature 
 by knowing that we were within a few miles of that noble 
 Christian fane, Salisbury Cathedral, with its lofty and ex- 
 quisitely tapering spire piercing the skies, reminding us of an 
 eminent Scotsman and church dignitary, Bishop Gilbert Burnet, 
 the historian of the Reformation, and the eloquent advocate of 
 civil and religious liberty. 
 
 Reverting to those shadowy persons, the Druids, it is alleged 
 that one of them of considerable celebrity named Broichan, 
 resided at the court of the Pictish King Brude, and that the 
 Highland apostle St Columba had with him more than one 
 trial of strength, which has been duly recorded. ' On a certain 
 day,' says the biographer of Columba, * Broichan, while con- 
 versing with the saint, said to him : " Tell me, Columba, when 
 dost thou propose to sail?" The saint replied : " I intend to 
 begin my voyage after three days, if God permits me and pre- 
 serves my life." Broichan said : " On the contrary, thou shalt 
 not be able, for I can make the winds unfavourable to thy 
 voyage, and cause a great darkness to envelop you in its 
 shade." That same day, the saint, accompanied with a number 
 of his followers, went to the long lake of the river Nesa (Loch 
 
Iteathen Scotland. ^ 
 
 Ness), as he had determined. Then the Druids began to 
 exult, seeing that it had become very dark, and that the wind 
 was very violent and contrary. Our Columba called on Christ 
 the Lord, and embarked in his small boat; and while his 
 sailors hesitated, he the more confidently ordered them to raise 
 the sails against the wind. No sooner was this order executed, 
 while the whole crowd was looking on, than the vessel ran 
 against the wind with extraordinary speed.' ^ This is one 
 instance in which the magical pretensions of the Druids have 
 been specified. It is not the only one : the Christian teachers 
 seem constantly to have been in conflict with them, and are 
 represented as triumphing over their black art by means of the 
 miraculous powers they are supposed to have possessed. 'A 
 few days after his conversion,' ^ says the writer we have already 
 quoted, * a son of a householder was attacked with a dangerous 
 illness, and brought to the very borders of life and death. 
 When the Druids saw him in a dying state, they began with 
 great bitterness to upbraid his parents, and to extol their own 
 gods as more powerful than the God of the Christians, and 
 thus to despise God, as if he were weaker than their gods. 
 When all this was told to the blessed man (Columba), he 
 turned with zeal for God, and proceeded to the house of the 
 friendly peasant.' The saint, of course, triumphs over the 
 Druids, and raises the boy who had died to life again. 
 
 Among the Irish Scots, St Patrick had conflicts of a similar 
 nature, in which he also came off victorious. A Druid pours 
 poison into the cup of St Patrick, who blesses the cup, and the 
 fluid it contains congeals. He inverts it, and the poisonous 
 drops fall out. The Druid then by his incantations covers the 
 plain with snow, but adrhits his inability to remove the enchant- 
 ment till the same hour on the morrow; Patrick blesses the 
 plain, and the snow disappears. The Druid brings on a thick 
 darkness, but is unable to remove it. Patrick prays, straight- 
 
 1 Life of St Columba, by Adamnan, Book II., chap. xxxv. 
 ■■' Ibid., Book 11. , chap, xxxiii. 
 
ro Sf Gilei Lectures. 
 
 way the darkness vanishes, and the sun begins to shine.^ In 
 an ancient Irish manuscript,^ these magicians are represented 
 as drying up by their spells and incantations all the rivers, 
 lakes, and springs of a district. A great Druid shoots an 
 arrow into the air, and a fountain bursts forth where the arrow 
 falls. Many allusions are found in these old manuscripts to 
 the necromancy of the Druids, and to their different spells and 
 incantations. A favourite method of divination with them was 
 by sneezing,^ or by the song of a bird perched on a tree. In an 
 old poem attributed to St Columba, these and other similar 
 practices are referred to and abjured. ' Our fate,' sings the 
 poet, ' depends not on sneezing : 
 
 Nor on a bird perched on a twig. 
 Nor on the root of a knotted tree, 
 Nor on the noise of clapping hands. 
 Better is He in whom we trust — 
 The Father, the One and the Son.'* 
 
 And in another verse of the same poem, he says : 
 
 * I adore not the noise of birds, 
 Nor sneezing, nor lots in this world, 
 Nor a son, nor chance, nor woman — 
 My Druid is Christ, the Son of God.' ^ 
 
 In another poem, in the form of a prayer, the same saint 
 alludes to the magical arts of his adversaries. He recognises 
 their power over the elements of nature, and exclaims : 
 
 * My Druid — may he be on my side ! — 
 Is the Son of God, and truth with purity.'® 
 
 1 Todd's Life of St Patrick, p. 452, 
 
 ' Professor Occury's Lectures, p. 271. 
 
 3 Both among the Greeks and Romans, sneezing was used for the same 
 purpose. In the middle ages, this method of divination was denounced by 
 ecclesiastical councils. 
 
 * Todd's Life of St Patrick, p. 122. » Ibid., p. 132. ^ Ibid., p. I20, 
 
Heathen Scotland. 
 
 II 
 
 These notices are probably sufficient to shew what was the 
 character of Druidism among the Celts. It was a system of 
 necromancy like that which has ever been inseparably con- 
 nected with heathenism ^ — a . belief in men who can bring 
 storms, and bewitch fields, and bring down rain — a belief in 
 oracles and divinations and charms. Belief in such men has 
 always accompanied the lowest forms of religious faith. 
 
 The religion of the northern kingdoms of the Picts and Scots, 
 of which the Druids were the ministers, was in itself, as might 
 be expected from what we have said, of a very debased and 
 grovelling kind. It seems to have been mainly a kind of 
 fetichism, an adoration of natural objects and of the powers 
 of the external world — the rocks, the wind, the thunder; and 
 if the people rose in thought above what came within the 
 knowledge of the senses, it was only to people the material 
 world with demons and malignant spirits, to whom all pheno- 
 mena were attributed, and whose aid was to be sought, or 
 whose wrath was to be averted, by means of charms and magical 
 spells. Among the pagan Scots, pillar stones were objects of 
 worship,^ and were either overthrown, or consecrated with the 
 sign of the cross, by the early Christian teachers. On a great 
 plain in Ireland stood, it is said, a great stone idol, called Ce7i7i 
 Cricaich, ornamented with gold and silver, with twelve other 
 idols around it, ornamented with brass, which were worshipped 
 by the natives, and which St Patrick cast down by simply 
 raising his pastoral staff.^ In a poetic life of the same saint, it 
 is said that 
 
 ' He preached three-score years 
 The cross of Christ to the Tuatha of Feni ; 
 On the Tuatha of Erin there was darkness. 
 The Tuatha adored the Sidhe.'* 
 
 1 Conflict of Christianity, by Gerhard Uhlhorn, Book II., chap. iii. 
 
 2 Todd's Life of St Patrick, p. 127. 
 
 ^ Professor Occury's Lectures, p. 539 ; Todd's Life of St Patrick, p. 127. 
 * The Celts, by Rev. G. R. M'Lear, p. 23. 
 
ti 5/ Gibes' Lectures. 
 
 The sidhe were spirits who were supposed to haunt nature, 
 and to dwell underground, and a belief in their dread power 
 remained long after Christianity had obtained firm hold on 
 Scotland, and lingers in some parts of our country to the 
 present day.^ St Columba seems to have had full belief in the 
 existence of these demons, which were believed to have their 
 usual dwelling-place in fountains and green hillocks, and 
 delighted in exorcising them. ' While ^ the blessed man was 
 stopping,' says his biographer, ' for some days in the province 
 of the Picts, he heard that there was a fountain famous among 
 this heathen people, which foolish men, having their senses 
 blinded of the devil, worshipped as a god. For those who 
 drank this fountain, or purposely washed their hands or feet in 
 it, were allowed by God to be struck by demoniacal art, and 
 went home either leprous or purblind, or at least suffering from 
 weakness or other kinds of infirmity. By all these things the 
 pagans were seduced, and paid divine honours to the fountain. 
 Having ascertained this, the saint one day went up to the 
 fountain fearlessly ;• and on seeing this, the Druids, whom he 
 had often sent away vanquished and confounded, were greatly 
 rejoiced, thinking that, like others, he would sufier from the 
 touch of that baneful water.' The saint then blessed the foun- 
 tain, ' and from that day the demons departed from the water ; 
 and not only was it not allowed to injure any one, but even 
 many diseases amongst the people were cured by this same 
 fountain after it had been blessed and washed in by the saint.' 
 At another time, when the saint began to pray, he beheld * a very 
 black host of demons fighting against him with iron darts;' 
 and in an ancient life of St Patrick, mention is made of his 
 meeting with nine Druids clad in white garments with a magical 
 host.^ These invisible spirits pervaded the elements of nature 
 
 ^ See a curious book on the underground people, by Mr Kirke, minister 
 of Balquhidder. 
 
 '^ Adamnan's Life of St Columba, p. 45. 
 3 Betham, Ant, Res., II., Ap., p. xxxi. 
 
Heathen Scotland, 
 
 13 
 
 — the clouds, the waters, the earth, the trees. One of the legen- 
 dary kings of Ireland is stated to have received as pledges from 
 the nation, ' sun, moon, and every power which is in heaven and 
 in earth,' that the sovereignty should always remain in his own 
 race ; and in a striking poem, said to be by St Patrick, there 
 are signs that even he had not altogether shaken himself free 
 from a sense of the mysterious power of the elements of 
 nature. He realised it very vividly. He says : 
 
 * I bind to myself to-day 
 The power of Heaven, 
 The light of the Sun, 
 The whiteness of the Snow, 
 The force of Fire, 
 The flashing of Lightning, 
 The velocity of Wind, 
 The depth of the Sea, 
 The stability of the Earth, 
 The hardness of Rocks.' 
 
 He invokes these with Christian powers, such as the power of 
 Christ's incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, to defend 
 him from the magical and evil influences by which he believed 
 himself surrounded. 
 
 ' I have set around me all these powers. 
 Against every hostile savage power 
 Directed against my body and my soul ; 
 Against the incantations of false prophets ; 
 Against the black laws of heathenism ; 
 Against the false laws of heresy ; 
 Against the deceits of idolatry ; 
 Against the spells of women and smiths and Druids ; 
 Against all knowledge which blinds the soul of man.' 
 
 The same saint is described as having an interview with the 
 daughters of the Irish king, who supposed him and his com- 
 
14 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 panions to be Duine Sidhe'^ — gods of the earth. Then 
 the following questions are put by one of the princes to the 
 evangelist — and they shew traces of the nature-worship of the 
 inquirer : 
 
 * Who is God ? 
 And where is God ? 
 And what is God ? , . . 
 Is He in heaven or in earth ? 
 In the sea? 
 In rivers ? 
 
 In mountainous places ? 
 In valleys ? 
 Declare unto us the knowledge of Him.* 
 
 The Scots and the Picts were in that low religious condition in 
 which Nature and her powers are objects of dread. Their 
 religion was one of fear. It was a fetichism, and can scarcely 
 be called anything more. Polytheism or Monotheism it was 
 not, for they seemed to have had no idea of higher powers than 
 these spirits of evil, governing and controlling all visible things. 
 * They knew not God.' 
 
 The religion of the Britons of Strathclyde was not very 
 different from that of the northern kingdoms which we have 
 described ; any Christianity they had been taught had vanished. 
 They were as heathen as their neighbours, and followed the 
 customs of their forefathers. They gave a high place in their 
 society to the bards or poets, some of whose effusions have 
 come down to us, and like the Picts and Scots seem to have 
 venerated natural objects, grafting on their own original pagan- 
 ism some of the superstitions of their Saxon neighbours. In 
 the account given of the preaching at Hoddam, in Dumfries- 
 shire, of Kentigern, who finally converted the Britons to Christi- 
 anity, there is a reference made to their religious practices, 
 
 1 Todd's St Patrick, 
 
Heathen Scotiatid. 15 
 
 which is suggestive enough. That teacher shewed them ' that 
 idols were dumb, the vain inventions of men, fitter for the fire 
 than for worship. He shewed that the elements, in which they 
 believed as deities, were creatures and formations adapted by 
 the disposition of their Maker to the use, help, and assistance 
 of men. But Woden, whom they, and especially the Angles, 
 believed to be the chief deity from whom they derived their 
 origin, and to whom the fourth day of the week is dedicated, 
 he asserted with probability to have been a mortal man, king 
 of the Saxons, by faith a pagan, from whom they and many 
 nations have their descent.'^ From this extract we can glean 
 an idea of what was the religious condition of the inhabitants 
 of the British kingdom. 
 
 Such is a slight sketch of the paganism of the three Celtic 
 kingdoms — those of the Picts, Scots, and Britons. Many traces 
 of this paganism survive to the present day. In the belief in 
 fairies, in charms, in witchcraft, that still lingers in many parts 
 of Scotland, we have the remains of the old Celtic heathenism ; 
 and any one who is familiar with what is called folk-lore will 
 find abundant evidence of old druidical superstitions still existing 
 in the midst of our present civilisation. Many of these super- 
 stitions were treated not a little kindly by the Christian teachers, 
 and perhaps on this account have survived. Pillar stones had 
 engraven on them the sign of the cross, and became objects 
 of Christian veneration.^ Fountains were blessed and became 
 holy wells. Demonology was fully recognised and exorcism 
 practised. Heathen festivals were converted into Christian 
 holidays. Few who observe May-day and All-hallow E'en know 
 that these were festive days before even the name of Christ was 
 heard in this land ; and the very ceremonies by which they are 
 still observed have their origin in far-away pagan times. It was 
 
 1 Jocelyn, Vit. S. Ken., chap, xxxii., quoted by Skene. 
 * Todd's Life of St Fah'ick, p. 500. 
 
1 6 S^ Gile£ Lectures. 
 
 an advice given by one of the popes to British missionaries * 
 that they should disturb as little as necessary pagan practices. 
 ' The temples, cleansed with holy water, were to be hallowed for 
 Christian worship ; and heathen festivals, instead of being rudely 
 abolished, might be devoted to the celebration of the festival 
 of the saints ; ' for, as he argues, ' you cannot cut off everything 
 at once from rude natures — he who would climb a height must 
 ascend step by step, and not by leaps and bounds.' It is on 
 this principle, so clearly laid down by high authority, that the 
 Christian teachers of Scotland seem to have acted, and hence 
 the existence in our own time of many traces of that paganism 
 against which they contended. 
 
 When we turn from Celtic to Saxon heathenism, and come 
 from the mountains of the north, and the regions of the west, 
 to the kingdom of Northumbria and the eastern Lowlands of 
 Scotland, we feel that we are upon sure ground ; for the religion 
 of the Teuton or Saxon was well defined, and we have ample 
 information as to its character. It prevailed over a great part 
 of Europe. It was a polytheism ; for it had a system of recog- 
 nised deities, and it also had a cosmogony, or theory of creation, 
 and a doctrine of a future state peculiarly its own.^ Let us 
 glance at some of the main features that distinguished it. 
 
 The greatest of the Saxon gods was Odin, or Woden, whose 
 name is given to the fourth day of the week — Wednesday, 
 or Wodensday. To him warriors were dedicated ; and when 
 they went to battle, they vowed to give him a certain number 
 of souls. He was the supreme deity. The next among the 
 gods was Thor, after whom the fifth day of the week is called 
 Thursday, or Thorsday. He was the thundering god — powerful 
 
 » Bede, H. E., i. 30. 
 
 ''This sketch of Saxon heathenism is chiefly founded on the following 
 authorities : Ten Great Religions, by F. Clark ; Kemble's Saxons itt Eng- 
 land ; Mallet's Northern Antiquities; The English, by the Rev. G. F. 
 M'Lear ; and Dasent's Burnt Njal, 
 
Heathen Scotland. 
 
 17 
 
 over the elements, guiding the storms, sending rain. He carried 
 a hammer or club which, as often as he hurled it from him, 
 came back to his hand again. Tiew, whose name the third day 
 of the week bears, was the giver of victory, the god of battle. 
 Frea was the god of fertility, of the life-giving sunshine, of 
 fruitfulness and peace. Balder was the god of light and grace, 
 of splendour, manly excellence, and beauty. The goddess 
 Friege was the wife of Woden, and gave the name to the sixth 
 day of the week. And lastly, there was Saetere, of whom we 
 know little more than that he gave his name to the seventh 
 day. 
 
 Inferior to these, there were other gods and goddesses too 
 numerous to mention, and in addition a plentiful supply of 
 demons or evil spirits who wrought woe to the human race, and 
 whose machinations were unending. The chief of these was 
 Loki, who bore a fearful character as ' the calumniator of the 
 gods, the grand contriver of deceit and fraud, the reproach of 
 gods and men,' beautiful in figure, and surpassing all mortals 
 in his powers of craftiness. ' Three monsters owe their birth 
 to him — the wolf Fenris, the serpent Midgard, and Hela or 
 Death. All three are enemies to the gods, who after various 
 struggles have chained this wolf till the last day, when he shall 
 break loose and devour the sun. The serpent hath been cast 
 into the sea, where he shall remain till he shall be conquered by 
 the god Thor ; and Hela or Death has been banished into the 
 lower regions, where she has the government of nine worlds, 
 into which she distributes those sent to her. Here she 
 possesses a habitation protected by exceedingly high walls and 
 strongly barred gates. Hunger is her table, starvation her knife, 
 delay her man, slowness her maid, precipice her threshold, 
 care her bed, and burning anguish forms the hangings of her 
 apartments.' 
 
 The life and transactions of the various deities are very 
 particularly chronicled. In their manner of life they are thor- 
 oughly human. Their court is kept under 'a great ash-tree, 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Sf Gi/es' Lectures. 
 
 where they distribute justice. Its branches cover the face of 
 the earth. Its top reaches to the highest heaven. It is sup- 
 ported by three vast roots, one of which extends to the ninth 
 world. An eagle whose piercing eye discerns all things, perches 
 upon the branches ; a squirrel is constantly running up and 
 down it to bring news, while a parcel of serpents fastened to 
 the trunk endeavour to destroy it. From one of the roots runs 
 a fountain where wisdom lies concealed. From a neighbouring 
 spring (the fountain of past things) three virgins are continually 
 drawing a precious water with which they water the ash-tree. 
 These three virgins always keep under the ash, and it is they 
 who dispense the days and ages of men. Every man has a 
 destiny appropriated to himself, who determines the duration 
 and events of his life; but the three destinies of more special 
 note are Urd ^ (the past), Werande (the present), and Sculde 
 (the future).' 
 
 The account of the creation of all things was of the same 
 definite yet imaginative character, and it is instructive to com- 
 pare it with the Scripture and other cosmogonies. ' In the day- 
 spring of the ages there was neither sea nor shore, nor refresh- 
 ing breezes. There was neither earth below nor heaven above 
 to be distinguished. The whole was only one vast abyss with- 
 out herb and without seeds. The sun had then no palace, the 
 stars knew not their dwelling-places, the moon was ignorant of 
 her power. After this there was a luminous, burning, flaming 
 world towards the south ; and from this world flowed out 
 incessantly into the abyss that lay towards the north, torrents 
 of sparkling fire, which, in proportion as they removed far 
 away from their source, congealed in their falling into the abyss, 
 and so filled it with snow and ice. From the icy vapours, 
 melted into warm living drops by a wind from the south, came 
 the giant Ymir. From him came a race of wicked giants. 
 Then arose in a mysterious manner Bor, the father of three 
 
 ^ Hence the word weird. 
 
Heathen Scotland. 19 
 
 sons — Odin, Vili, and Ve. The sons of Bor slew the giant Ymir, 
 and the blood ran with such abundance from his wounds that 
 it caused a general inundation, wherein perished all the giants 
 except one who, saving himself in a bark, escaped with all his 
 family. Then a new world was formed. The sons of Bor 
 dragged the body of the giant into the abyss, and of it made the 
 earth; the sea and the rivers were composed of his blood ; the 
 earth of his flesh ; the great mountains of his bones ; the rocks 
 of his teeth and of splinters of his broken bones. They made 
 of his skull the vault of heaven, which is supported by four 
 dwarfs named South, North, East, and West. They fixed there 
 tapers to enlighten it. The days were distinguished ; the nights 
 were numbered. They made the earth round, and surrounded it 
 with the deep ocean. One day, as the sons of Bor were taking a 
 walk, they found two pieces of wood floating on the water ; 
 these they took and out of them made a man and a woman. 
 The eldest of the gods gave them life and souls ; the second, 
 motion and knowledge ; the third, the gift of speech, hearing, 
 and raiment. From this man and woman, named Askus and 
 Embla, is descended the race of man who now inhabit the 
 earth.' 
 
 Such is the account of creation which the Teutons believed. 
 It resembles the Greek story of the origin of the gods, and in 
 its idea of the origin of all things from nebulous vapours 
 and heat, it reminds us of some of those scientific theories 
 which are frequently set forth at the present day. Not less 
 striking than their cosmogony, was their theory of another 
 world. It is as materialistic as can well be conceived, but at 
 the same time most characteristic of the race that held it. 
 'The realm of Hel was cold, cheerless, and shadowy. No 
 simulated war was there from which warriors desisted with 
 renovated strength and glory. No capacious quaichs of mead 
 or cups of life-giving wine : chill and ice, frost and darkness, 
 shadowy realms without a sun, without song or wine or feast.' 
 While Hel was of this gloomy character, the heaven of the 
 
iS/ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Saxon, Waeheal or Valhalla, was very different. ' The heroes 
 who are received into the palace of Odin have every day 
 pleasures among themselves, of passing in review, ranging 
 themselves in order of battle, of cutting one another to pieces ; 
 but as soon as the hour of repast arrives, they return all safe to 
 the hall of Woden, and fall to eating and drinking. Though the 
 number of them cannot be counted, the flesh of the boar 
 Serimner is sufficient for them all ; every day it is served up at 
 table, and every day it is renewed entire. Their beverage is 
 beer and mead ; one single goat, whose milk is mead, furnishes 
 enough to intoxicate the heroes. Their cups are the skulls of 
 the enemies they have slain.' It is evident how strongly this 
 conception of the future takes its colour from the whole 
 existence, temperament, and history of the warlike race who 
 believed in it. It was the shadow projected by their life. 
 
 The legends of their gods would occupy, and indeed do 
 occupy volumes. They were not, like the classic deities, dwell- 
 ing in unbending dignity on Mount Olympus ; but roamed to and 
 fro, and were as much given to adventure as their worshippers on 
 earth. We will give only one of these legends as a specimen of 
 many. It is supposed to be, like them all, parabolic — to have 
 a deep moral and spiritual meaning — to set forth the ' struggles 
 of the soul against the inexorable laws of nature, freedom against 
 fate, the spirit with the flesh, mind with matter, human hope 
 with change, disappointment, loss.' Thor goes to visit his 
 enemies the giants of cold and darkness. The king of the city 
 where they dwell inquired what great feat Thor and his com- 
 panions could perform. ' One professed to be a great eater, on 
 which the king summoned one of his servants, called Logi, and 
 placed between them a trough filled with meat. Thor's companion 
 ate his . share, but Logi ate meat and bones too, and the trough 
 into the bargain, and was considered to have conquered. Thor's 
 other companion was a great runner, and was set to run with a 
 young man called Hugi, who so outstripped him that he reached 
 the goal before the other had gone half-way. Then Thor was 
 
Heathen Scotland. 21 
 
 asked what he could do himself. He said he would engage in 
 a drinking-match, and was presented with a large horn, and re- 
 quested to empty it at a single draught, which he expected easily 
 to do; but on looking, the liquor appeared hardly diminished. 
 The second time he tried, and lowered it slightly ; a third time, 
 and it was sunk only half an inch. Then he was brought to try 
 a new feat. He was asked to lift a cat from the ground, and 
 ignominiously failed. Lastly he wrestled with an old toothless 
 woman, and lost his footing. Afterwards the discomfiture of 
 Thor was thus explained. The triumphant eater was fire itself, 
 the devourer of all things, disguised as a man. The successful 
 runner was thought, whose fleet step none can outstrip. The 
 horn out of which he tried to drink was the ocean, which was 
 lowered a few inches by his tremendous draughts. The cat 
 was the great Midgard serpent which goes round the world, and 
 Thor had actually pulled the world a little way out of its place ; 
 and the old woman was old age, with whom the strongest will 
 wrestle in vain.' 
 
 In legends like these, through which ran a thread of moral 
 meaning, the Saxon delighted. They were the reflection of 
 the qualities that distinguished him, and the outcome of 
 his own daily life in its struggle with the severities of a 
 northern clime. His worship corresponded to his mythology. 
 Temples of the gods abounded. Plentiful sacrifices of 
 animals were offered to them, and human sacrifices were not 
 spared on occasions of importance. * Near every gathering- 
 place of a tribe stood the stone of sacrifice, on which the necks 
 of the victims were crushed and broken ; and the holy pool, in 
 which another kind of human sacrifices were sunk.'^ There were 
 great feasts, religious in their character, which were frequently 
 held. At these the people gathered round smoking caldrons, 
 in which the animals that had been sacrificed were boiled, 
 and all in turn partook. The feasts ended with much 
 
 1 Dasent, Btirnt Njal, xxxviii. 
 
2 2 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 drinking, and cups were solemnly drained in honour of the 
 gods. ' The first bowl, for victory and strength, was drained to 
 Woden; the second to Freye, for peace and good harvests.' All 
 the other gods were remembered in the same way, and the last 
 bowl was drunk to the memory of the dead. The superstitions 
 which clustered round the Teutonic religion were more numer- 
 ous than we can even mention ; and in the laws of Christian 
 times, which denounce them, we have them tabulated with 
 great minuteness. They were of the most grovelling kind.^ 
 Magic was common. Well-worship, divinations, enchantments, 
 spells ^ of all kinds are continually mentioned ; and in many 
 particulars they resemble the practices to which we ha^e referred 
 as connected with Celtic paganism. 
 
 This is an account, necessarily slight, of the state of heathen 
 Scotland in its various parts .previous to the advent of Chris- 
 tianity. The heathenism that prevailed was of the darkest 
 kind, and in its best form can hardly be called higher in 
 character than that which exists to-day in China or any other 
 missionary field : but little impulse could come from it to 
 civilisation and progress, hardly any to morality. It seems 
 strange indeed to think that little more than a thousand years 
 ago Scotland was peopled with idolaters, and the greater 
 part of it with idolaters of the most benighted description — 
 that amid the hills and valleys and islands of the north, there 
 dwelt ' savage tribes and roving barbarians,' fierce as the New 
 Zealander, cunning as the Red Indian, degraded in their 
 belief as the Zulu — that here, in the capital of Scotland, 
 perhaps on the site of this ancient Christian church where 
 we now worship, there may have stood a temple to Woden 
 or Thor, and have been witnessed the orgy of an idol's feast, 
 
 ^ See Kemble's Saxons, vol. i., appendix, where many of these notices 
 are given. 
 
 2 Such as sticking pins into a clay figure, which was supposed to injure 
 the person represented. 
 
Heathen Scotland. 23 
 
 or the horrors of human sacrifice. It is difficult to realise 
 this; to place ourselves even in thought in these dark ages; 
 to pass even in imagination from the light of our Chris- 
 tianity and civilisation under the veritable 'shadow of death' 
 that rested upon our land. Students of comparative theology 
 know how in the heart of many of the old religions there 
 lay a hope of a good time coming to the race ; and the ' uncon- 
 scious prophecies of heathenism,' telling of a great conqueror 
 to come, have been often referred to.^ Whether these were mere 
 dim longings for something better, that took shape in words, 
 or whether they were the echoes of the Jewish prophecies which 
 had reached distant lands, it is impossible to determine. When 
 we read in Zoroaster that ' Osideberga will manifest himself to 
 the inhabitants of the world, promote religiousness, destroy 
 iniquity, and restore the ancient order of things. In his time 
 rest and peace shall prevail, dissensions cease, and all grievances 
 be done away ' — Or in the works of Confucius, ' that a great 
 and holy one shall appear in the latter days, to whom nations 
 look forward as fading flowers thirst for rain ' — When we 
 hear Plutarch saying that ' the god of the lower world will 
 eventually be utterly deprived of his power, and then men be 
 happy, and will no longer stand in need of nourishment, or 
 throw a shadow ' — Or Virgil, as he tells how a child was to come 
 from heaven, a dear offspring of the gods, Jove's great descend- 
 ant, and the golden age was to arise over the whole world' — we 
 feel as if we were listening to an echo of the sublime strains of 
 Isaiah. ' Unconscious prophecies,' like those of other religions, 
 were not wanting in Scottish paganism : the early Christian 
 missionaries to the Picts and Scots appeal to such prophecies 
 existing among these peoples. There were sages, one of 
 them tells us distinctly, before their own coming, ' who had fore- 
 
 ^ Christianity confirmed by yewish and Heathen Testitnony, by T. Steven- 
 son (Edinburgh : David Douglas) ; an interesting work. Also Walsh, 
 Donellan Lectures, p. 213. 
 
24 S^ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 told the bright word of blessing that would come to the land 
 of the letter; for it was the Holy Spirit that spoke and pro- 
 phesied through the mouths of just men, as he had prophesied 
 through the mouths of the chief prophets and fathers in the 
 patriarchal law ; for the law of nature had prevailed where the 
 written law did not reach. ^ In the religion of the Saxons, 
 there is a very marked and distinct announcement of a great 
 deliverer who was to restore all things, and harmonise those 
 discordant elements which were ever present to the Teutonic 
 mind, and close for ever that warfare which he saw prevailing 
 on every side around him. The central idea of his curious 
 belief was the struggle of the soul against natural obstacles — 
 the conflict of life with death, of freedom with fate, of choice 
 with necessity, of good with evil. The gods of the Teuton 
 were always at war. His religion was a dualism in which sun- 
 shine, summer, and growth were waging perpetual battle with 
 storm, snow, winter, ocean, and terrestrial fire.' ^ This conflict 
 was to grow more intense as the ages succeeded each other, 
 and at last to end in harmony. The poetry in which this is 
 expressed is of a lofty character.^ 
 
 ' Brothers slay brothers ; 
 Sisters' children 
 Shed each other's blood ; 
 Hard is the world ; 
 Sensual sin grows huge. 
 
 There are sword ages, 
 Earth cleaving cold ; 
 Storm ages, murder ages. 
 Till the world falls dead, 
 
 1 The Senchits Mor, vol. i., p. 27. 
 
 2 Clark's Ten Great Religiotis. 
 
 3 Clark's Ten ReligioJis, p. 366 ; Kemble's Saxons in England, p. 410 ; 
 Brace, Travels in Norway and Sweden. 
 
Heathen Scotlarid. 25 
 
 And men no longer spare 
 Or pity one another. 
 
 Black wanes the sun ; 
 In waves the earth shall sink ; 
 From heaven shall fall 
 The friendly stars ; 
 Round the tree 
 Red fire shall rustle ; 
 High heat play 
 Against the heaven.' 
 
 But when all the powers of evil are conquered, a better state 
 shall arise : 
 
 ' " In Gimle " the lofty ; 
 
 Then shall the hosts 
 
 Of the virtuous dwell, 
 
 And through all ages 
 
 Feast of deep gladness. 
 
 Then unsown 
 
 The swath shall flourish, 
 
 Back come Baldr.' 
 
 Then shall descend the mighty one from above — He who ruleth 
 over all, whose name man dares not to utter. 
 
 Then one is born 
 
 Higher than all. 
 
 He becomes strong 
 
 With the strengths of the earth ; 
 
 The mightiest King 
 
 Men call him ; 
 
 Fast knit in peace 
 
 With all powers. 
 
26 Sf Giks^ Lectures. 
 
 Then comes another 
 Yet more mighty ; 
 But him I dare not 
 Venture to name, 
 Than to where Odin 
 To meet the wolf goes.' 
 
 With mysterious and weird prophecies like these, familiar to 
 them, sung by their bards, repeated by their priests, our fore- 
 fathers found themselves face to face with Christianity and its 
 message of hope. 
 
 It does not fall within my province to tell how that message 
 was received, or what change its reception wrought on the 
 personal and national life of the inhabitants of Scotland. This 
 much I may say, without trenching on the ground of those who 
 are to follow me, that Christianity took up and consolidated 
 the national characteristics of our forefathers. Among the 
 Celts it enlisted the spirit of clanship in the service of Christian- 
 ity. Among the Saxons it allied itself ' with what was dearest 
 and what was highest — with their homes, their assemblies, their 
 crowns, their graves.'^ It fused the different races — Picts, Scots, 
 Britons, Saxons — into one great strong people through the idea 
 of a spiritual society which it inculcated and held up before 
 them, the purest, perhaps, which ever drew men together.^ 
 They seem to have embraced Christianity with wonderful 
 facility when it was presented to them, and, though there were 
 occasional relapses into paganism, and some heathen practices 
 were tenaciously retained, the converts appear to have adhered 
 with wonderful constancy to the rites and worship of the new 
 faith. Their teachers were gentle with them, tender to their 
 superstitions, and forbearing with native usages of which they 
 might not altogether approve. Many notices have come down 
 
 "^ Influences of CJmstianity on Naiional Character, by R. W. Church. 
 ^ Guizot, Lecture xii., p. 230. 
 
Heathen Scotland. 27 
 
 to us illustrative on the one hand of the way in which the new 
 religion approached them, and of the manner in which they 
 embraced it. Of these we may give two instances — one from 
 Celtic, the other from Saxon sources. They are voices from 
 out of the heart of the old paganism of Scotland, that touching 
 in their character. In an ancient Gaelic poem the heathen 
 poet Oisin is represented as holding a dialogue with the first 
 Christian teacher of the Scots — St Patrick. This poem is found 
 in many forms in Irish and Gaelic manuscripts, and though it 
 may not be of much historic value, it must, I think, be regarded 
 as a last voice of Celtic heathenism. The old bard rejoices in 
 the worship of nature, and records the prowess of his heroic 
 forefathers ; the missionary tells of the power of God beyond 
 all visible things, and speaks in dogmatic terms of the future 
 state. ^ 
 
 * Patrick of the solemn psalms,' begins the old pagan, 
 * how great your love for God must be, since you do not close 
 your book and listen to the voice of the blackbird ! Sweet 
 blackbird high on yon bending bough, how soothing is your 
 song ! Although you never heard mass said by priests, how 
 delightfully you whistle.' He then goes on to tell of the music 
 of his warlike ancestor, Fionn : * He played melodiously with 
 the harp, while I am here in grief with the clergy ; ' and then he 
 sings in heroic strains of the prowess of the forefathers, and 
 mourns that he should have survived them and fallen on an 
 evil time. * When I think of the men who were so brave, I 
 feel cheerless, without friendship for my heart. Here I am 
 weak, living after the Fenii and Fionn MacCumhal. Small is 
 my esteem for thyself and clergy — O holy Patrick of the 
 crosier. I have greater regard for the white-handed king of 
 the Fenii — but he is not near me now.' The saint has little 
 
 * This poem is found in various forms. One version is in the Book of 
 Lismore. We quote from a very interesting translation by Simpson, in 
 Poems of Oisin, Bard of Erin. 
 
28 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 sympathy with his regard for the heroes of other days — he 
 warns his Hstener that he has not long to live — his great 
 forefather died a pagan and is in hell, and he will soon follow 
 him unless he accepts the Christian faith, 
 
 ' He is now shut up in torment ; all his generosity and 
 wealth do not avail him now for lack of piety towards God — 
 for this he is in sorrow in the mansion of pain.' The old bard 
 rises in incredulity and indignation, and there is something 
 pathetic in the way he refuses to accept the cruel dogmatism 
 of his teacher. ' Is Fionn in hell — the hero mild who bestowed 
 gold ! in forfeit for sins against the great God — is he in the 
 house of torment under sorrow ? I do not believe it possible 
 for God, though great his power and his strength, nor for any 
 devil who came ever, to put under lock Fionn of the Fenii — 
 Fionn the hospitable to be under locks ! heart without malice 
 and without aversion ; heart stern in defence of battle ! It is 
 plain your God does not delight in giving gold and food to 
 others. Fionn never refused strong or weak, and shall he 
 receive hell for his abod.e ! ' The saint contends against such 
 unorthodox views with an earnestness which would do credit to 
 some modern theologians. ' However much he may have 
 divided gold and venison, hard are his bonds in the den of 
 pains ; no glimpse of hght for him, no sight of brightness such 
 as he first received from God ! ' The bard replied that he 
 would rather be in hell with his forefathers than in the heaven 
 of the saint. 
 
 * I would rather return to the Fenii once more, O Patrick, 
 than go to the heaven of Jesus Christ to be for ever under 
 tribute to him. I would rather be in Fionn's court hearkening 
 to the voices of hounds in the morning, and meditating on 
 hard-fought battles, than in the court of Jesus Christ.' The 
 dialogue goes on at great length. What we have quoted is 
 probably sufficient to indicate its character — the heathen 
 clinging to his old beliefs ; the saint entreating him to ' smite 
 his breast and shed tears, and believe in Him who is above 
 
Heathen Scotland. 29 
 
 him.' It exhibits in poetic form the meeting of the old and 
 new. It belongs to the transition time ; the daAvning hour ; 
 the twilight of Scottish Christianity. 
 
 Another memorial of the same time comes to us from Saxon 
 sources, and refers to the Saxon kingdom now incorporated in 
 Scotland. In a council of the wise men of the court of Edwin — 
 who gives the name to our own city — of his aldermen and thanes 
 and nobles, the Christian teacher stood ready to plead his cause. 
 No scene in the history of missions is fuller of romance^ than 
 that which ensued. Coifi, the high-priest of Woden, arose and 
 confessed that he was moved by the new doctrines. He had 
 served his gods long and faithfully, yet there were those in the 
 kingdom who were richer and greater than he — if the deities 
 had power, he would have been richest and greatest of all. 
 He asked that the new doctrine should be explained to them. 
 The missionary declared his message to the assembly, and at 
 the close of his address the high-priest exclaimed : '■ Long since 
 have I known full well that what we have been worshipping is 
 naught, and the more diligently I sought after truth therein, the 
 less I found it; but now in what this stranger preacheth I 
 openly confess there shineth forth such truth as can confer on 
 us life, salvation, and eternal happiness. I advise therefore, 
 O king, that we straightway break and burn down those temples 
 and altars which we have hallowed, and whence we have 
 gained no good.'^ 
 
 The advice was followed. The temple of Woden was 
 thrown down by the high-priest himself, who hurled his spear 
 at it, and bade his men break down the temple, and burn the 
 hedge ; but before this demolition of shrines was agreed to, one 
 of the assembled thanes gave his opinion in words that are 
 full of deep feeling, and cannot fail to touch us still, though so 
 many centuries have passed away since they were spoken. 
 They are words which speak, on the one hand, of the hopeless- 
 
 ^ M'Lear's Conversion of the English^ p. 51. 2 Bede, H. E., ii. 9. 
 
30 iS/ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 ness of the old religion, and of the gleam of hope which the 
 new threw on the life and destiny of man. ' The life ■"■ of man 
 in this world, O king,' said the speaker, 'may be likened to 
 what happeneth when thou art sitting at supper with thy thanes 
 in the time of winter. A fire is blazing on the hearth, and the 
 hall is warm ; without, the rain and the snow are falling, and 
 the wind is howling. There cometh a sparrow, and fiieth 
 through the house. She entereth by one door, and goeth out 
 by another. While she is within the house, she feeleth not the 
 howHng blast; but when the short space of rest is past, she 
 flieth out again into the storm, and passeth away from our 
 eyes. Even so is it with the brief life of man ; it appeareth 
 for a little while, but what precedeth it or what cometh after it 
 we know not at all. Wherefore, if this new lore can tell us 
 aught, let us hearken to it and follow it.' 
 
 What that new lore told them regarding the present life and 
 destiny of man we know, for we have heard it ourselves. The 
 contrast between the paganism of that time and the civilisation 
 of to-day is so overwhelmingly great as to be indescribable. 
 The change in social life — political organisation — the rise of 
 art — the discoveries of science — these things mark the distance 
 we have travelled since the first Christian missionary set foot 
 upon our shores. Year by year there has been a steady 
 advance in all that pertains to the elevation of man ; and the 
 Scotland of to-day is as unlike the Scotland of that early time, 
 as the well-tilled and cultivated fields are unlike the rough 
 forests, swamps, and morasses, in which our wild ancestors 
 were wont to dwell. How difficult it is for us, as we travel 
 through some of the more fertile parts of our country, to think 
 of them being formerly only inhabited by painted barbarians, 
 living by the spoils of the chase ; and that where now the busy 
 city stands — its spires and noble buildings springing up against 
 the sky — were groups of huts in which they lived in all the 
 
 ^ M'Lear's Conversion of the English, p. 51. 
 
Heathen Scotland. 31 
 
 squalor of savage misery. It is impossible to deny that it 
 is Christianity that has been the chief source of all that 
 has made our country great; that it caused barbarism to be 
 exchanged for purity of life, and the heroism of savages for the 
 virtues of Christianity ; that it gave an impulse to civilisation 
 that has not yet spent itself. Above all, it brought comfort 
 to those who knew no mitigation of human sorrow, and 
 hope to those for whom the future was full of dread. It is 
 well for us who now hear the sound of peaceful industry and 
 the chime of the church bell, where once ascended the screams 
 of devil-worshippers and the smoke of sacrifices, to remember 
 how the change has come, how mighty it has been, and to 
 have faith in the power of the same cause ever to produce the 
 same result. Heathenism still confronts us in many quarters of 
 the globe with which we have a close connection and a direct 
 interest — heathenism, many of the forms of which recall that 
 from which our own country was delivered. Let us not deny 
 to those that ' sit in darkness ' the same blessings that have in 
 God's mercy come to ourselves. ' You have seen,' it has been 
 eloquently said,^ ' the fresh spring bursting up from the earth, 
 and after it has filled its own little basin, overflowing into a rill 
 that causes fertility and bloom all over the neighbouring valley. 
 Like this is the living water of the love of Christ, that gleams 
 and leaps with life, and then starts forth to convey its fullness 
 and exuberance to barren places. The church that has no 
 love to spare is the standing pool that " creams and mantles " 
 with unwholesome things bred in its bosom by reason of its 
 deadly stillness.' If this imperfect sketch which we have given 
 you to-day of the paganism of old Scotland, make you more 
 earnest in striving to enlighten that which still exists even in 
 the Scotland of the present day — the heathenism in the heart 
 of the Christian Church and under the shadow of our temples, 
 and which sheds its baleful shadow over so large a portion of 
 
 ^ Word, Work, and Will, by W. Thomson, Archbishop of York. 
 
32 Sf ales' Lectures. 
 
 the globe ; if it fill you with a sense of gratitude to Almighty- 
 God for your own privileges, and deepen a sense of your 
 responsibility to extend these privileges to others ; if it bring 
 you into greater sympathy with those who are seeking to 
 extend the kingdom of Christ ; if it lead you even ' to hold the 
 rope ' for those who bravely go down into the pit, I shall not have 
 spoken in vain. If, looking to the past and to the present, we 
 can say with the Psalmist : ' Blessed be the God of Israel, who 
 only doeth wondrous things ; and blessed be his glorious name 
 for ever,' we will surely not refuse to add also with him the 
 prayer : ' And let the whole earth be filled with His glory. 
 Amen and amen.' ^ 
 
 1 Psalm Ixxii. 18, 19. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE 11. 
 
 EARLY CHRISTIAN SCOTLAND, 400 to 1093 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. A. K. H. BoYD, D.D., First Minister of St Andrews. 
 
 TV /r Y time is short ; and I have to tell you the story of six 
 ■'■-*■ hundred and ninety years ; from the beginning of the 
 fifth century to near the end of the eleventh : a period which 
 may be taken as including the Introduction of Christianity 
 into Scotland, and its progress till earlier organisations were 
 merged in the great Mediaeval Church. Not one sentence, 
 therefore, of introduction, save this : that it would be easier 
 to compile a moderate volume than to prepare the thirty-two 
 pages to which these lectures are restricted. For the materials, 
 though often unreliable, are more than abundant. They are 
 sometimes of deep interest. Above all, they afford opportunity 
 of fighting over again still-continuing controversies under 
 ancient names. But this is just what I am not going to do. 
 My course is plain. For having, by aids quite familiar to most 
 
 c 
 
34 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 scholars^ (there is no room here for original investigation), 
 gained a fairly-clear idea for myself of that period, I wish to set 
 it as clearly as may be before you ; the truth uncoloured by 
 any bias. I do not hold a brief. 
 
 I take for granted that you know what was said in this place 
 as to Heathen Scotland to the Introduction of Christianity. 
 It is generally supposed that during the Roman occupation of 
 Britain, the Christian religion had made its way into the 
 country. For Christianity, after Constantine, was part of the 
 constitution of the Roman Empire ; and the British Church, 
 such as it was, was part of the Church of the Empire. The 
 better faith was gradually undermining the ancient paganism. 
 But of the personnel nothing Avhatever is known. The late 
 Bishop Forbes of Brechin tells us that there was 'a regular 
 hierarchy, with churches, altars, the Bible, discipline ; ' but 
 there is no authority whatever for the statement, except in so 
 far as the existence of Christianity may be taken to imply all 
 these ; and the names of the earliest preachers and priests have 
 absolutely perished. 
 
 1 The following are the authorities from which the facts stated in this 
 Lecture have been derived : 
 
 1. Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban. By William F. Skene. 
 Volume II. Church and Culture. Edinburgh : 1877. 
 
 2. Lives of St Ninian and St Kentigern : compiled in the Twelfth 
 Century. Edited from the Best MSS. by Alexander Penrose Forbes, D.C.L., 
 Bishop of Brechin. Edinburgh: 1874. 
 
 3. Life of St Coliimba, Founder of Hy. Written by Adamnan, Ninth 
 Abbot of that Monastery. Edited by William Reeves, D.D., M.R.I.A., 
 Edinburgh : 1874. 
 
 4. Scoti-Monasticon. The Ancient Chtcrch of Scotland. By Mackenzie 
 E. Walcott, B.D., F.S.A., Precentor of Chichester. London: 1874. 
 
 5. The History of Scotland. By John Hill Burton, Volume I. Edin- 
 burgh : 1867. 
 
 6. Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals. An Article in the Quarterly Review 
 for June 1849. Known to be by the late Dr Joseph Robertson. 
 
 7. Some information has been derived from various writings of the late 
 Robert Chambers, LL.D., notably from the article Icolmkill in his Gazetteer 
 of Scotland. Glasgow : No date, 
 
Early CJiristian Scotland. 35 
 
 The first, whose name and career are in any way known to 
 us, is St Ninian. In a troubled time, when the Empire was 
 pressed by outlying barbarians and had yielded before them, 
 shrinking within that northern frontier formed by the wall drawn 
 across the country from the Forth to the Clyde in 369 a.d., 
 Ninian founded a Christian community on the north shore of 
 the Solway Frith. There, at a place which took the name of 
 Whithern, and which still abides with slight change in name, 
 the Saint built a church of stone, the first built of stone in that 
 region, which was called Candida Casa, the White House. The 
 title tells us how it looked in the eyes of the rude inhabitants 
 of Galloway : how it looked to such as saw it rising on its 
 promontory above Wigtown Bay. 
 
 It is a faint outline, the figure of St Ninian : it is hard to 
 realise him as a living and working man. It is said that his 
 father was a British king. It is more certain that through 
 many years he was trained at Rome in the doctrine and disci- 
 pline of the Western Church. It seems established that he 
 laid the foundation of his church at Whithern in 397 a.d. 
 Tradition gives the derivation of the name. Coming into 
 Galloway, he asked a night's lodging of a churlish smith and 
 his son : and being denied, the Saint fixed his staff three fingers'- 
 length in the anvil, so that no human strength could move it. 
 Terrified, the smith and his son besought pardon. The staff 
 was removed. And Terna and Wyt (for such were their names) 
 hastened to offer their land to the Saint, who called it Wytterna 
 in memory of its givers. St Ninian's object was the conversion 
 of the Picts who inhabited Galloway. He accomplished his 
 end and more. The inhabitants of Scotland, as far as the 
 Grampian range, renounced idolatry and became Christians. 
 Many churches and altars received his name : some places 
 bear it still. 
 
 The Roman occupation of Britain ended in 410 a.d. From 
 this time, for many years, all historical information ceases. 
 It does not seem that Ninian's years in Galloway were 
 
36 Sf Gilei Lectures. 
 
 many. There is mention of the name of Palladius, a Bishop 
 sent by Pope Celestine in 430. By this time Ninian was 
 gone. But his work remained, for a while : and it reached 
 beyond what is now called Scotland, Ireland comes near to 
 Galloway : and the inhabitants of Ireland were the only race 
 then called Scots. Into that country the Church of St Ninian 
 extended : A Church closely connected with the Gallican, and 
 doubtless recognising the Bishop of Rome as its head. 
 
 No detail remains of St Ninian's work or worship. There 
 is no trustworthy account of what like man he was. We are 
 told, indeed, that he wrought many miracles : and we may 
 believe that the story is true that he, like many great religious 
 workers, and like the Master of all such, gained strength for 
 his work by seasons of lonely prayer. Like St Regulus at St 
 Andrews, he chose a cave by the sea-side for his oratory : one 
 such is still pointed out in the parish of Glasserton. We do 
 not know his methods of evangelising. It would be profoundly 
 interesting if we knew exactly how he set himself to his great 
 work. No doubt he worked by many hands and many voices 
 besides his own. He built his church : he gathered around him a 
 company of men like-minded : these pervaded the thinly-peopled 
 region round, and they penetrated far. How did they tell their 
 story to the ignorant heathen : how did they explain the errand 
 on which they came : what did they say ? Did they reason 
 with these reasonless creatures, offering them something better 
 than they knew as yet : or, prophet-like, speaking with author- 
 ity, did they command the poor pagan what to think and what 
 to do ? One thing seems plain, as concerning the conversion 
 of tribes and peoples in those days : the missionary-preacher 
 aimed at the conversion of chiefs and kings. These being 
 gained, those under their authority followed their lead. There 
 is something curious, and something touching, in the simple- 
 minded fashion in which old chroniclers take it for granted that 
 when the king was persuaded to be baptised, his subjects as of 
 course followed. The surprise of both chief and missionary- 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 37 
 
 saint would have been extreme, had any subject presumed to 
 think for himself. Some survival of that old way, even into 
 recent days, may be traced in the undoubting expectation of 
 certain proprietors of the soil, that their tenants should vote, in 
 matters political, as the proprietors might decide ; and should 
 even undergo very rapid conversion of views when the proprie- 
 tors did so. But the conversion of large numbers to Christian- 
 ity was a simple thing, and a rapid thing, in St Ninian's days. 
 Only get one, and you got many. Draw the one : many would 
 run after him. Conversion is a very different work, in an age 
 wherein individual souls must be dealt with : each soul thinking 
 for itself. 
 
 So rapid and wide must have been the work of conversion to 
 the better faith, when in this same dimly-discerned age, Scotland 
 sent Ireland her great missionary St Patrick ; and all Ireland was 
 converted in twenty-one years. About the year 372 Patrick 
 was born, possibly at Kilpatrick near Dumbarton, of which 
 place his father is said to have been Provost. At the age of 
 forty-five Patrick was consecrated a Bishop : ' Patricius, a sinner 
 and unlearned, but appointed a Bishop in Ireland,' is the good 
 man's description of himself His work lies beyond our range : 
 and our range is too wide already. Indeed, little is certain 
 concerning the Apostle of Ireland save that he was Scotch (as 
 we now understand the word) by birth : that he did a great 
 work in Ireland, with which country his name is indissolubly 
 linked; and that he died about the year 458, having returned 
 to die at the place where he was born. 
 
 You will think that the men and the events of that distant time 
 look dim in the twilight of fable. But the light grows less. A 
 hundred years pass between the death of St Ninian and the 
 coming of the next great missionary-saint ; — Columba. St 
 Palladius, already named, possibly did his work in Scotland and 
 in Ireland. He is called by some the first Bishop in Scotland : 
 and one Servanus is named as his friend and associate. Tradition 
 says Palladius died at Fordoun in Kincardineshire. But it is 
 
38 S^ ales' Lectures. 
 
 waste of time to dwell upon a period of which it is to be con- 
 fessed that we know nothing for certain. This seems sure : 
 that the work of St Ninian had been done too quickly to last ; 
 and that after Ninian and Patrick died, Scotland mainly 
 relapsed into heathenism. 
 
 The work hitherto had been done by Churches, and a Secular 
 Clergy. For that age, and that race, the system had been in 
 great degree a failure. Another organisation came in God's 
 Providence : and the Monastic rule succeeded where the 
 Secular had failed. 
 
 Only the utmost prejudice, founding on the utmost ignorance, 
 will deny the good work done by Monasteries and a Monastic 
 Clergy in their day of purity, energy, and self-devotion : or will 
 deny that they were admirably fitted to do the work they did. 
 The Christian Church needed not only dissemination, but also 
 strong centres. A Mission, set down amid a great surrounding 
 Heathen population, demands these yet : It is impossible to 
 imagine a case in which human nature more urgently needs 
 the strengthening and comfort of the companionship of those 
 like-minded. The Monastery, placed in a Heathen land, with 
 its brethren reckoned in those days sometimes by hundreds, was 
 in fact a Christian colony, into which converts were gathered 
 under the name of Monks. And the Monks did good work 
 in divers ways. They spread a zone of cultivated land around 
 them, reclaimed from the morass and the forest. We remark time 
 by time how beautiful is the landscape still abiding round the 
 ruins of some ancient religious House, not always remembering 
 what hands made it so. The Monasteries were quiet havens 
 amid surrounding tempests. Amid the terrible insecurity of 
 life, and the utter disregard of right and wrong, which we can 
 discern to have been characteristics of Heathenism, here was 
 comparative security, here were truth and righteousness. The 
 Monasteries were places of Education : they were schools : the 
 only schools for many a day. And while Printing was yet un- 
 known, here a constant work went on of multiplying copies of 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 39 
 
 Holy Scripture : but for which the Bible might almost have 
 perished. Nor need we forget, Ave who miss it so sadly, the 
 ever-recurring hour of prayer and praise : the Psalms, notably, 
 from beginning to end, kept familiar as they are to very few of 
 us. The Monastery, in the age of which we are thinking, was 
 no more than a gathering of rude huts, with a wattled chamber 
 for a church, and a turf wall surrounding the settlement to keep 
 off in some measure the invasion of savages. Yet it had its 
 devout and earnest hearts : its masterful and statesman-like 
 mind in its place of rule : It gave the mutual help and en- 
 couragement that come of brotherhood. It was a Base of 
 Operations : the very best that could have been, then and there. 
 Its analogues abide in the changed circumstances of the world : 
 mankind will not readily part with them. The Heads and 
 Fellows (supposing them to be what they ought to be) of a 
 great University : the quiet learning, the elevated devotion, the 
 available store of preaching and missionary and consultative 
 power, of the ideal Cathedral Close : the workers (taking them 
 for what they ought to be) of a modern Mission set down far 
 in the depth of African heathenism and savagery, tilling the 
 soil, curing the body, caring for the soul : the Brotherhood in 
 faith and feeling and work after which many earnest men have 
 longed, when constrained to work on in isolation, and which is 
 aimed at by Unions and Societies and Guilds beyond number- 
 ing : the Quiet Days (let us not say Retreats) in some peaceful 
 scene, where continual worship and kindly counsel strengthen 
 the weary minister and advise the perplexed and lift up all 
 hearts to God and send back to labour with fresh hope and 
 energy : all these and more were in the Monastic System, while 
 it was kept up to the purity of its idea. 
 
 You will say, the Monastic System soon fell far below its 
 ideal. You will say, Monasteries were abused : and the day 
 came when they did evil and not good. True : and then they 
 went down and were swept away. But the abuse and degrada- 
 tion of a thing in itself good is not peculiar to any age or 
 
40 S^ ales' Lectures. 
 
 system. So he will judge who has seen the occasional working 
 of what in this country are called Church Courts : who has 
 heard a devoted clergyman, of undoubted Presbyterianism, 
 declare in a loud voice that if his Presbytery then adjourned 
 and never met again, the interests of religion within its bounds 
 would not suffer at all : who has heard another clergyman, 
 venerable by character and years, and devoted to the Church 
 of Scotland, say how on his way to the Presbytery he visited a 
 dying man and promised to see the dying man again on his 
 way back ; but that certain hours of that Court's deliberations 
 wholly unfitted him to be of any use to any Christian soul. I 
 might quote a much more vehement testimony, borne by an 
 eminent preacher : but it is better not. And I might add a 
 great deal more : but I will not. God forgive us all our many 
 shortcomings in temper and speech. God forbid that what 
 was intended for His glory and for the good of souls should 
 ever be so perverted that it too must go. 
 
 At Clonard, in Ireland, there was a monastery of three 
 thousand monks : a great training-school of missionaries, a 
 great starting-point of missionary work : founded by St Finnian. 
 St Finnian had twelve chief disciples, who filled the land with 
 religious settlements, and who were known as the Twelve 
 Apostles of Ireland. The names of eleven of these good men 
 are of little concern to us : but the name of the twelfth must 
 never be forgotten in Scotland. His name was Colum : the 
 name was latinised into Columba : as a Colon of wider fame 
 became Columbus. He was born on December 7, 521 a.d. at 
 Gartan in Donegal : both father and mother were of royal 
 descent. It is remarkable to what a degree Bishops and 
 Abbots in those days were of royal race. Strict hereditary 
 succession to worldly dignities and property was unknown 
 among the Celts of that period. Two paths were open to 
 energetic ambition. Should it be temporal king : or should it 
 be spiritual leader? To such as Columba the latter path 
 seemed the preferable. To rule a devoted community, which 
 
£arly Christian Scotland. 41 
 
 exercised a wonderful sway over men's hearts and souls, even 
 though it lived an austere life in a settlement of rude huts of 
 wattles and clay, had its attraction. And Columba, though 
 mainly known to us as a religious leader, was deeply concerned 
 likewise in the state affairs of his day. 
 
 As Scotland gave St Patrick to Ireland, so Ireland gave St 
 Columba to Scotland. It remains a debated question. What 
 brought St Columba here at all. Some would say, pure mis- 
 sionary and evangelistic zeal. But it appears at least as likely 
 that he had made his own country too hot to hold him. There 
 are terrible stories of the temper of the Apostle of lona. He 
 was a Saint : but there was in him a certain infusion of that 
 which some folk call Devil : though like a certain great Duke, 
 with whom it was likewise so, he became very mild and gentle 
 when he grew old. I must tell you the story shortly. A great 
 battle was fought in Connaught in 561 a.d. There was terrible 
 slaughter. A Synod of the Saints of Ireland decided that 
 Columba was responsible for all this evil : and that he must needs 
 win from Paganism as many souls as had perished in battle ere 
 he could be reinstated. Besides the work assigned to him, the 
 penance was imposed of perpetual exile from Ireland. He 
 sailed away, with twelve disciples. He landed first upon 
 Colonsay. But, ascending a hill, he found Ireland was still in 
 view; and he must go farther. Finally, in 563 a.d., being now 
 in his forty-second year, he arrived with his followers at a small 
 island, separated by a narrow channel of a mile in breadth 
 from the greater land of Mull. The island has been variously 
 known. It was I, it was la, it was Ily : these words each 
 signifying T/ie Is/and: but it came to bear the musical and 
 never-forgotten name of lONA, The Island of the Waves. On 
 Whitsun-Eve, in that year the Twelfth of May, St Columba 
 landed at lona : which was to be his home for six and thirty 
 years. Christianity was there before him. He found two 
 Bishops: Bishops of that singular kind of Collegiate Church 
 which had arisen in Ireland in St Patrick's days : a Collegiate 
 
42 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Church of Seven Bishops, apparently co-ordinate. We do not 
 know how they got on together. These two Bishops were 
 willing to welcome Columba. But he refused to recognise the 
 validity of their orders : and apparently reasoned the matter 
 with them. The result was one very unusual in ecclesiastical 
 controversy. The two Bishops saw they were wrong : and 
 they departed, leaving the island to the Saint. Speedily 
 Columba succeeded in gaining a grant of Hy : apparently 
 from one King Connall : to whom it probably did not belong. 
 
 Pilgrims without number have in recent years visited lona. 
 Those who have thoroughly explored it say it is a pleasanter 
 island than hasty visitors know it for. It has picturesque bays : 
 quiet dells : green hills : plains not unfruitful. It is three 
 miles and a half in length : a mile and a half in breadth. 
 Divers isles are in sight : Mull looked like the mainland. Did 
 Columba resolve to abide here; and to christianise the lands 
 he saw? As with lesser men, probably he was guided by 
 circumstances : probably his way opened before him as he went 
 on. From that stand-point St Columba did in fact christianise 
 all Scotland north of the Forth and Clyde. For a hundred 
 and fifty years the Church of St Columba was in truth the 
 National Church of Scotland. 
 
 I suppose it would not do, in speaking of the place, the 
 man and the work, to omit a famous passage known to many 
 who otherwise have little knowledge of either. In the autumn 
 of 1773 A.D., Johnson, attended by Boswell, came to Icolmkill, 
 77/1? Island of Cohunba of the Churches. They found no conve- 
 nience for landing, and were carried by Highlanders to the strand. 
 
 ' We were now treading that illustrious island which was once 
 the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans 
 and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and 
 the blessings of religion, . . . That man is little to be envied, 
 whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of 
 Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer amid the 
 ruins of lona.' 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 43 
 
 Dr Johnson records that even Boswell was ' much affected ' 
 by the sight of the ruins. And he hazarded the conjecture 
 that in the revolutions of the world, lona 'may be sometime 
 again the instructress of the Western regions.' It may .be 
 appointed so. I have heard the most renowned of modern 
 Anglican preachers, looking upon the ruins of St Andrews 
 Cathedral, say : ' This church will be rebuilt, stone for stone.' 
 It does not appear likely, in these days of payment by results. 
 One could but say Amen, Amen. 
 
 What-like Church was the Church of St Columba ? Was it 
 Episcopal? Was it Presbyterian? Was it neither one nor 
 other ? 
 
 It was an Episcopal Church of a peculiar type. The system 
 was essentially Monastic. There were no territorial Bishops. 
 There were no Bishops' Sees. There were indeed Bishops, 
 who were recognised as of a higher grade spiritually ; but who, 
 anomalously, were placed under the authority of the Abbot. 
 They could do what the Abbot could not. They could ordain : 
 but they must ordain as they were ordered. And in St 
 Columba's own day, there was no Bishop at lona at all. Any- 
 thing which needed a Bishop to do, Columba got done in 
 Ireland. When the days came in which St Columba's rude 
 buildings of wattles and wood gave place to the Cathedral 
 of red granite from Mull and to the divers halls and apartments 
 of a fully-equipped monastery, and in which lona was recog- 
 nised as the Mother-Church of many fair daughter-establish- 
 ments ; still all the Province, and even the Bishops, were 
 subject to the Abbot of Hy. The case seems strange : but it 
 has its analogous cases to this day. Higher spiritual rank may 
 be freely admitted in theory, while yet the holder of it shall be 
 kept in his proper place ; and that a humble one. You may 
 have known the resident Chaplain in a noble family which held 
 very high views of the spiritual powers of the priesthood, believ- 
 ing that whosesoever's sins they remit are remitted and whose- 
 soever's sins they retain are retained, yet declare himself in 
 
44 -5"/ Giles" Lectures, 
 
 public to be no more than a humble retainer of that great 
 House. And the only excuse for the expression of a humility 
 thus approaching to the abject, was, that the lowly priest's 
 statement of his own position was severely true. 
 
 No traces remain of the buildings which Columba raised 
 more than thirteen hundred years since. We know their 
 general character. There was an earthen rampart which 
 inclosed all the settlement. There was a mill-stream : a kiln : 
 a barn : a refectory. The church, with its sacristy, was of oak. 
 The cells of the brethren were surrounded by walls of clay, held 
 together by wattles. Columba had his special cell, in which he 
 wrote and read : two brethren stationed at the door waited his 
 orders. He slept on the bare ground, with a stone for his 
 pillow. The members of the community were bound by 
 solemn vows. They bore the special tonsure which left the 
 fore part of the head bare. It looked well in front, we are 
 told ; but unsatisfactory in profile. The brethren were arranged 
 in three classes : the Seniors, the Working Brothers, the Pupils. 
 Their dress was a white tunic, over which was worn a rough 
 mantle and hood of wool, left its natural colour. They were 
 shod with sandals ; which they took off at meals. Their food 
 was simple : consisting commonly of barley bread, milk, fish 
 and eggs, with seals' flesh. On Sundays and Festivals the fare 
 was somewhat better. 
 
 It does not appear that Daily Service was maintained in the 
 church. The Psalter was repeated continually, but from this 
 the Working Brothers were excused. The chief service was 
 the Communion, celebrated each Sunday : also on Festal 
 Days. Easter was the great Festival of their Christian year. 
 They used the sign of the Cross many times. They fasted on 
 Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent. A peculiar form of austerity 
 practised by some was to remain in cold water till they had 
 repeated the entire Psalter. They lived a life of rule, and of 
 constant self-denial. The unreasonable yet natural belief was 
 ingrained with them, as with others beyond number, Roman 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 45 
 
 and Protestant, Christian and Heathen, that the less they 
 pleased themselves the more they pleased God : and that 
 God, in His moral government, would never be hard on 
 tortured creatures, who had been so awfully hard upon them- 
 selves. 
 
 But for Coluniba's purpose it was not enough that he and his 
 brethren should so live. No doubt, the fame of their sanctity 
 and austerity would spread around them. But what did the 
 holy men of lona do, beyond being thus holy? They found 
 access, first, to the neighbouring Picts; both teaching and 
 exemplifying better things than the savage race had known 
 before. After two years St Columba gained a hold upon the 
 king of that region, Brude, who dwelt near the river Ness. On 
 his first visit, the king kept his gates shut against the Saint : 
 but Columba made the sign of the Cross, the bolts flew back, 
 and he and his companions entered. The king, in anger, 
 drew his sword : but the same sacred sign made over his hand 
 withered it into helplessness, till he became a Christian. Then 
 the hand, now to be used to better purposes, was restored to 
 him. The king being won, his people at once followed. Who 
 were they, that they should know better than their Master? 
 And might not he do what he liked with his own? The 
 magicians were banished from Court : and Columba took 
 their place, ruling the monarch both for his own good and 
 the kingdom's. It was a supernatural power to which king 
 and subjects bowed. For they believed that Columba wrought 
 many miracles : uttered many prophecies : and was visited 
 oftentimes by angels. The Saint was a despotic ruler, but a 
 beneficent one. Nor was he lacking in worldly wisdom : in 
 all its manifestations : from the highest and largest sagacity 
 of the statesman, down to the homely tact which is service- 
 able in daily life. 
 
 In twelve years from his coming, Columba had done much. 
 The community of lona was large : it was zealous : it was 
 docile ; it was incorruptible. The Saint now began to found 
 
46 Sf Giles' LecUires. 
 
 monasteries in neighbouring islands. He chose his agents 
 wisely. They loved him sincerely, yet he inspired too a 
 salutary fear. In 584 a.d. King Brude died : but Columba's 
 influence was so established that there was no falling off 
 through the loss of his royal protector. He pushed on his 
 outlying settlements to near the river Tay, And Cainnech 
 (the Saint of Kilkenny) founded a monastery in the Eastern 
 corner of Fife, at a spot by the sea called Rig Monadh, 
 the Royal Motmt. Afterwards there arose here the great 
 church and monastery of St Andrews : hence for long named 
 Kilrymont. 
 
 In 597 A,D. St Columba was seventy-seven years old. At 
 the end of INIay, carried in a litter, he visits the Working 
 Brethren, busy on the other side of the island. He speaks to 
 them with the gentleness which had been growing : and which, 
 pleasant as it was, they were almost afraid to see. He tells 
 them he would wilHngly have died in April, in the first of 
 Spring : but that he was glad this had been denied him, lest 
 his removal should have made the Easter Festival a season of 
 mourning to them. Then, turning to the East, he blest the 
 island and all its inhabitants : and from that day no venomous 
 serpent could harm man or beast therein. 
 
 On Sunday June 2 he was celebrating the Communion as 
 usual : when the face of the venerable man, as his eyes were 
 raised to heaven, suddenly appeared suffused with a ruddy 
 glow. He had seen an angel hovering above the church and 
 blessing it: an angel sent to bear away his soul. Columba 
 knew that the next Saturday was to be his last. The day 
 came : and along with his attendant, Diormit, he went to 
 bless the Bam. He blest it, and two heaps of winnowed 
 corn in it : saying thankfully that he rejoiced for his beloved 
 monks, for that if he were obliged to depart from them, they 
 would have provision enough for the year. His attendant 
 said : ' This year, at this time, father, thou often vexest us, by so 
 frequently making mention of thy leaving us.' For like humbler 
 
Early CJiristian Scotland. 47 
 
 folk, drawing near to the great change, St Columba could 
 not but allude to it, more or less directly. Then, having bound 
 his attendant not to reveal to any before he should die what he 
 now said, he went on to speak more freely of his departure. 
 ' This day,' he said, ' in the Holy Scriptures is called the 
 Sabbath, which means Rest. And this day is indeed a Sabbath 
 to me, for it is the last day of my present laborious life, and on 
 it I rest after the fatigues of my labours : and this night at 
 midnight which commenceth the solemn Lord's Day, I shall 
 go the way of our fathers. For already my Lord Jesus Christ 
 deigneth to invite me : and to Him in the middle of this night 
 I shall depart, at His invitation. For so it hath been revealed 
 to me by the Lord Himself.' 
 
 Diormit wept bitterly : and they two returned towards the 
 monastery. Half-way, the aged Saint sat down to rest, at a spot 
 afterwards marked with a cross : and, while here, a white pack- 
 horse, that used to carry the milk vessels from the cowshed to 
 the monastery, came to the saint, and laying its head on his 
 breast, began to shed human tears of distress. The good man, 
 we are told, blest his humble fellow-creature, and bade it 
 farewell. Then, ascending the hill hard by, he looked upon 
 the monastery, and holding up both his hands, breathed his 
 last benediction upon the place he had ruled so well ; pro- 
 phesying that lona should be held in honour far and near. 
 He went down to his litde hut, and pushed on at his task of 
 transcribing the Psalter. The last lines he wrote are very 
 familiar in those of our churches where God's praise has its 
 proper place : they contain the words of the beautiful anthem 
 which begins * O taste and see how gracious the Lord is.' He 
 finished the page : he wrote the words with which the anthem 
 ends : ' They that seek the Lord shall want no manner of 
 thing that is good : ' and laying down his pen for the last 
 time, he said, ' Here, at the end of the page, I must stop : let 
 Baithene write what comes after.' 
 
 Having written the words, he went into the church to the last 
 
48 Sf Gi/es' Lectures. 
 
 service of Saturday evening. When this was over, he returned 
 to his chamber, and lay down on his bed. It was a bare flag : 
 and his pillow was a stone, which was afterwards set up beside 
 his grave. Lying here, he gave his last counsels to his brethren : 
 but only Diormit heard him. ' These, O my children, are the 
 last words I say to you : that ye be at peace, and have unfeigned 
 charity among yourselves : and if then you follow the example 
 of the holy fathers, God, the Comforter of the good, will be 
 your Helper : and I, abiding with Him, will intercede for you : 
 and He will not only give you sufficient to supply the wants of 
 this present life, but will also bestow on you the good and 
 eternal rewards which are laid up for those that keep His 
 commandments.' The hour of his departure drew near, and 
 the Saint was silent : but when the bell rung at midnight, and 
 the Lord's Day began, he rose hastily, and hurried into the 
 church, faster than any could follow him. He entered alone, 
 and knelt before the altar. His attendant, following, saw the 
 whole church blaze with a heavenly light : others of the 
 brethren saw it also ; but as they entered the light vanished 
 and the church was dark. When lights were brought, the 
 Saint was lying before the altar : he was departing. The 
 brethren burst into lamentations. Columba could not speak : 
 but he looked eagerly to right and left, with a countenance 
 of wonderful joy and gladness : seeing doubtless the shining 
 ones that had come to bear him away. As well as he was 
 able, he moved his right hand in blessing on his brethren ; and 
 thus blessing them, the wearied Saint passed to his rest : St 
 Columba was gone from lona. The church was filled with 
 the lamentations of the bereaved brethren. But the face 
 of the Saint remained glorified by the heavenly Vision he 
 had last seen. 
 
 He died on the Ninth of June, 597 a. d. 'I did not feel 
 sorrowful,' said a good man, telling how he had stood by the 
 open grave of a great Evangelist of later days : ' for he was 
 weary, weary in the work.' Even so, looking on that still face. 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 49 
 
 They carried the mortal part of St Columba back to the 
 chamber from which a Httle before he had come alive : and 
 his obsequies were celebrated with all reverence for three days 
 and nights. But only the inhabitants of the island he had 
 ruled laid him in his honoured grave. Long before, a simple 
 brother had said to the Saint that so great a multitude would 
 flock to his burial that the island would be entirely filled. But 
 St Columba said : ' No, my child, it will not be so. None but 
 the monks of my monastery will perform my funeral rites, and 
 grace the last offices bestowed upon me.' Sure enough, a storm 
 of wind without rain made the Sound impassable through the 
 three days and nights : and the sea grew calm whenever 
 the Saint was laid to his last sleep ; ' to rise again,' as his 
 kindly biographer St Adamnan says, truly if the words were ever 
 said with truth of any, 'with lustrous and eternal brightness.' 
 Some days after, messengers from lona came to a place in 
 Ireland where Columba was held dear ; and the question 
 was eagerly put to them, 'Is he well?' 'Yes,' was the 
 answer, ' he is well : he has departed to Christ.' 
 
 Yet, touched though. we be by the beautiful picture of his 
 end which Adamnan has given us, Adamnan the Ninth Abbot 
 of the monastery of which Columba was the first, we cannot 
 but acknowledge that the Saint left a memory not equally dear 
 to all. He was a masterful man. He would have his way, and 
 he had it : and there were those who did not like him at all. 
 Others there were who could not speak too warmly of him. 
 ' Angelic in appearance, graceful in speech, holy in work, 
 with highest talents and perfect prudence ; ' such is their 
 strain. There is but one account of his wonderful voice : 
 wonderful for power and sweetness. In church, it did not 
 sound louder than other voices ; but it could be heard per- 
 fectly a mile away. Diormit heard its last words : the 
 beautiful voice could not more worthily have ended its 
 occupation. With kindly thought of those he was leaving : 
 with earnest care for them : with simple promise to help 
 
 D 
 
5° iS/ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 them if he could where he was going ; it was fit that good St 
 Columba should die. 
 
 His prediction held true for many years as to the greatness 
 and honour of lona. Columba's monastery long retained the 
 primacy of all the churches and monasteries he had founded 
 in Scotland. But after his death, the succession breaks down ; 
 as it does still when a great man goes. You fill up his office ; 
 but you cannot fill his place. In a certain sense, no man is 
 necessary. In a very true sense, there are those, there have 
 been those, who will be missed at many turns till all are dead 
 who knew them. Still, the work at lona went on, with the 
 impetus of its first outset and of its singular success. In due 
 time they carried over the red granite from Mull : they chose 
 out from the rocks of the island itself such material as might 
 serve, the hornblende, the clay-slate, the gneiss : the marble 
 altar-piece came from a more genial clime : the severely beauti- 
 ful buildings rose : chapel, nunnery, monastery, and chief of 
 all, what was the Cathedral Church of the Bishops of lona, a 
 church which was dedicated to St Mary. Good men and wise 
 men ruled ; but there was never another Columba. 
 
 The Columban Church spread into Northumbria. The first 
 missionary-preacher was a severe man, who returned with the 
 complaint, common to workers lacking in temper and judg- 
 ment, that the Northumbrians were so peculiar a race that 
 nobody could make anything of them. A wiser and more politic 
 successor lived to tell a quite different story. St Aidan 
 preached with great success ; and he founded a see at Lindis- 
 farne, which twice a day becomes an island as the tide rises, 
 and is known as Holy Island. But the fame of the first 
 Bishop of Lindisfarne is lost in the light which surrounds the 
 great name of St Cuthbert. Twenty-seven years after St 
 Columba died, in 624 a.d., Adamnan was born, who ruled 
 lona as the ninth abbot, and repaired all the monastery, bring- 
 ing for that purpose oak-trees from Lorn. But evil days came. 
 Sea rovers, caring nothing for Columba or his work, time after 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 51 
 
 time plundered the settlement. And the time came, early in 
 the eighth century, when the little ways which the Columban 
 monks had kept as their own could be permitted no longer. 
 The Roman tonsure must be adopted : no doubt far liker the 
 Crown of Thorns than that hitherto used. And the Roman 
 fashion of reckoning the day on which Easter should fall gained 
 general acceptance : general, but not unanimous. Not fre- 
 quently, in Scotland, has any ecclesiastical change been made 
 with unanimity. And the lifting up of a testimony has not 
 been confined to post-reformation times. The Columban 
 monks refused to give up the ways which had come down to 
 them from their predecessors. The upshot was that the whole 
 of them were expelled from the Pictish kingdom, including 
 probably those of St Andrews; and the primacy of lona ended. 
 We pass to another great name. In the kingdom of Strath- 
 clyde, among its Cumbrian population, towards the close of 
 the sixth century, a Christian church was founded, the great 
 agent being St Kentigern. After the battle of Arthuret, on the 
 border of what is now Cumberland and Dumfriesshire, in 573 
 A.D., a certain chief, Rydderch Hael, bearing a designation in 
 after ages to become familiar, for he is called The Liberal, be- 
 came king of Strathclyde. The story of St Kentigern's life is 
 not so well known as is the story of the life of St Columba : 
 for five hundred years passed before he found a biographer, 
 and marvellous fables had gathered round his personality. He 
 was the son of Thaney, or Teneu, or Thenaw : for in all these 
 ways his mother's name is given : a name which has passed 
 through a singular modification. The people of Glasgow are 
 familiar with a church which they call St Enoch's. It need not be 
 said to the least instructed in such matters, that there is no 
 such saint in the Calendar : nor that it would be contrary to all 
 rule if one who lived so long before Christ as the patriarch 
 who ' walked with God ' were recognised as a Christian saint. 
 The church was St Thenaw' s : and good folk who never heard 
 of St Thenaw, but who were accustomed to pronounce the name 
 
52 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 of Enoch in a fashion which I can remember as still surviving in 
 my student days, fell into a not unnatural error. The error, 
 not creditable to Scotch hagiology, is likely to abide. For not 
 merely has a remarkably handsome railway station at Glasgow 
 assumed the erroneous name, but the builders of a beautiful 
 church in Dundee thought the name so pretty, that they called 
 their church by it ; to the wonder of some. 
 
 St Thenaw was the young daughter of a Pagan king, who 
 ruled somewhere in the Lothians. Her son, afterwards to be 
 so renowned, was born at Culross, on the north side of the 
 Frith of Forth : then a wild solitude. Here the mother and 
 child were found by herds, attending on their cattle ; and were 
 brought by them to Servanus, a Christian evangelist who was 
 preaching near. Servanus was prepared for their coming. 
 That morning, at the hour of Kentigern's birth, he had 
 heard the Gloria in excelsis sung, far above him, by a choir of 
 angels : and in joy that one was born who was to do a good 
 work for Christ, Servanus had burst, with a thankful heart, 
 into that great hymn, now so familiar in our churches (thank 
 God), in which Christian folk through many centuries have 
 lifted up their hearts in supremest thanksgiving. We know it 
 by its first words : as verses dear to Scotland are known by 
 their last. It is the Te Deiim. Servanus welcomed mother and 
 child : exclaiming, at first sight of the infant, ' He shall be my 
 dear one:'' which in the language of his country is Munghu : in 
 Latin, the biographer tells us, Karissimus Amicus: Dearest 
 Friend. He baptised the two by the names of Taneu and 
 Kentigern. But the short pet name would not go. It 
 supplanted the grander : as Homer has Melesigenes : for 
 Homer means merely Blind Man. And as Joceline, in his 
 Life of St Kentigerti, says that ' by this name of Munghu even 
 to the present time the common people are frequently used to 
 call him, and to invoke him in their necessities,' so it is still. 
 The great city with which his name is linked has many times 
 been called The City of St Mungo ; never (in my hearing) of St 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 53 
 
 Kentigern. The beautiful church, which has seen every other 
 building in Glasgow rise, and which will probably be standing 
 in glory when every other building in Glasgow is in the dust, 
 bears the Saint's homely pet name : not a Christian name at all. 
 Not very many among the hundreds of thousands who live 
 round Glasgow Cathedral know what is indeed the church's 
 name. If the stranger in Glasgow were to ask his way to St 
 Kentigern's Church, he might find it as difficult to gain the 
 information desired, as if in Westminster he asked his way to 
 St Peter's. 
 
 Kentigern grew up : and it does not sound unnatural when 
 we are told that one who was so special a favourite of Servanus 
 was regarded with some jealousy by his fellow-students : for 
 Servanus was teaching a school of young divines. In divers ways 
 they testified their ill-will : and though Kentigern easily held his 
 own against them, yet he gradually found that for their sake, and 
 his own, and his master's, it was better he should go elsewhere. 
 The day came when he parted from the kind protector of his 
 infancy and childhood, with deep regret and with mutual bless- 
 ing : and they met no more. In a new wain, drawn by two 
 untamed bulls, Kentigern made his journey, knowing that he 
 would be guided to the place where God needed him. Straight 
 as an arrow, through the wild region without a path or road, his 
 singular team bore him : till they stopped, in a fashion that 
 signified that here they were to stop, at a spot called Cathures, 
 beside a burying-place which had been consecrated long 
 before by St Ninian. The name of Cathures yielded to 
 another which is likely to abide while the Empire stands : the 
 place became Glasgow. Here Kentigern dwelt for a while 
 with two brothers, who had inhabited the spot before his 
 arrival. One brother was Kentigern's friend, the other his 
 enemy : the friend, and his descendants for generations, were 
 richly blest of God : the enemy speedily came to a violent end. 
 Gradually, Kentigern's character matured, in wisdom and 
 holiness ; and his fame spread wide : so that the king and clergy 
 
54 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 of that thinly-peopled Cambrian region discerned in him the 
 man who could restore their failing Church, and with one con- 
 sent elected him their Bishop. Kentigern resisted the eleva- 
 tion, alleging his youth and his desire to give himself to holy 
 contemplation : but he yielded in the end to their importunity, 
 after the manner of ministers called to a larger sphere of useful- 
 ness : and a solitary Bishop having been brought from Ire- 
 land, after the fashion of the Britons and Scots of that day, he 
 was consecrated to the episcopal dignity. His consecration 
 was in several respects irregular : yet the judgment of the 
 Church admitted it as sufficient. 
 
 There had been an earlier Church at Glasgow, of St Ninian's 
 foundation : and Kentigern restored it. Fixing here his 
 Cathedral seat, he gathered to himself a family of earnest and 
 self-denying men, who lived without private property, in holy 
 discipline and service. Gradually, he extended his diocese to 
 the limits of the Cambrian Kingdom. He lived for a while peace- 
 ably at Glasgow, practising severe austerity. His food was the 
 sparest : mainly bread and milk : and even this only on each third 
 day. He was clad in the roughest hair-cloth : but over this he 
 always wore priestly robes, to remind him of his ministry. It is 
 curious to read in Dr Liddon's Life of the last Bishop of Salis- 
 bury that he too in his earlier work at Sarum wore his cassock 
 all the forenoon till he went forth for his daily walk, with the 
 like intention. So across the ages do the fancies of good men 
 meet. St Kentigern's pastoral staff was not gilded and 
 gemmed, but of simple wood, and merely bent. And in his 
 hand he always bore his Manual-Book, ready to exercise his 
 ministry whenever needful. As for his bed, he lay in a hollow 
 stone, having a stone in place of a pillow, like another Jacob. 
 Even this rigour did not suffice. When he lay down, he cast in 
 a few ashes : and taking off his sackcloth, he took his snatch of 
 sleep upon these. ' Verily,' says his biographer Joceline, ' he 
 was a stanch combatant against the flesh, the world, and the 
 devil.' At the second cock-crowing he arose, and stripping him- 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 55 
 
 self of his raiment, he plunged into the cold and rapid stream : 
 and then, with eyes and hands lifted up to heaven, he chanted 
 on end the whole Psalter. Wonderful health, both of body and 
 soul, followed this severe discipline. And sometimes, minister- 
 ing at the altar, when he said the Sursiim Corda, and sought to 
 lift up his own heart to Christ, a glory gleamed upon his face 
 and form, so that he seemed like a pillar of fire. 
 
 His story must be briefly told. His growing influence at Glas- 
 gow stirred the Avrath of a pagan king, one Morken. Morken 
 seems to have been a specially unmannerly soul : and not with- 
 out some power of metaphysical argument. When St Kentigern 
 applied to him for temporal means, towards the support of 
 the staff of Glasgow Cathedral, the king said to him : ' Is it 
 not a favourite rule with you, " Cast thy care upon God, and 
 He will care for thee ? " Now,' he continued, * here am I, 
 who do not regard God at all, and yet riches and honours are 
 heaped upon me, which are denied to you. Your doctrine is 
 false.' The Saint endeavoured to make the king discern that 
 worldly trial might be sent as a blessing, and that worldly 
 wealth was no sure mark of the Divine favour. But the truth, 
 it need not be said, was high above Morken's comprehension. 
 The king understood better when a miraculous flood swept all 
 his grain away, and laid it beside the little river Molendinar 
 ready for Kentigern's service. His temper, however, was none 
 the better for this experience of St Kentigern's power : and, 
 beaten in argument and in practice, in an evil hour for himself 
 the monarch kicked the Saint. Speedily judgment followed. 
 The king's feet fell off, and he died : and something resembling 
 gout was sent upon his descendants for generations. It is not 
 quite clear why Kentigern, leaving Glasgow for a while, took 
 refuge in Wales : he ought to have been safe anywhere. But 
 he went to Menevia, now known as St David's. He founded a 
 monastery at St Asaph's, in a valley which bore some resem- 
 blance to the Vale of Clyde. And when, after the Battle of 
 Arthuret, and the accession to the throne of Rydderch, The 
 
56 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 Liberal, Kentigern was recalled to Glasgow, he brought with him 
 no fewer than six hundred and sixty-five monks. It was at 
 Hoddam, in Dumfriesshire, that Rydderch met him : and there 
 he abode for a while : but Revelation indicated Glasgow as his 
 proper seat Hence he converted Galloway : Alban (which 
 means the North- East portion of Scotland): and even the 
 Orkneys. Traces of the Saint's sojourn in Wales remain in 
 certain Welsh names in the district which lies between the 
 Mearns and Deeside — a wild and picturesque tract, not 
 known as it deserves to be : and where doubtless the gospel 
 had been preached by monks who came from St Asaph's. 
 
 Of the miracles wrought by St Kentigern after his return to 
 Glasgow it would be unprofitable to speak. One may be named, 
 the memory of which is perpetuated in the arms of the great 
 Scotch city. A certain Queen, of small desert, besought the 
 Saint's aid in respect of a ring which she had given away, and 
 which her husband had demanded back from her, it having 
 been cast into the water by himself. And a certain great fish, 
 called a salmon, taken in the Clyde, was found to contain the 
 ring. The Queen was saved from imminent destruction, 
 thenceforward to live a better life. For the heaviest rain and 
 snow, which probably in those days as in the present fell in 
 even excessive measure on Glasgow, St Kentigern needed no 
 protection : his garments remained untouched. A recent 
 Anglican Bishop, being offered a pastoral staff by some zealous 
 folk, is recorded to have greatly discouraged them by saying he 
 would rather they gave him an umbrella : Not so with St 
 Mungo. And an instance in which certain rams, stolen from 
 the Saint, had their heads converted into stone, seems to be 
 commemorated in the curious name long borne by one of the 
 City Churches of Glasgow. Many can remember when St 
 David's was generally called The Rafnshorn Kirk. 
 
 There are traces of friendly intercourse between Kentigern 
 and his great contemporary St Columba. It is recorded that 
 they met, and exchanged crosiers. The meeting was at 
 
Early Christiati Scotland. 57 
 
 Glasgow : but the record of it is brief. For several days, we 
 are told, they conversed in kindly fashion, on the things of 
 God and on what concerned the salvation of men. Then 
 saying farewell with mutual love they returned to their homes, 
 never to meet again. 
 
 The years of Kentigern's episcopal rule passed on, and he 
 attained a great age. Tradition would make him live to a 
 hundred and eighty-five : and Bishop Forbes suggests that 
 temperance and sweet temper do much to lengthen life. But 
 Kentigern's maceration of his bodily nature went far beyond 
 healthful temperance : and though his disposition was gracious, 
 it seems as if the eighty-five years, lacking the century, were a 
 long span to one who had so toiled and so afflicted himself. 
 On the octave of the Epiphany, January 13, 612 a.d., St Kenti- 
 gern died. One of his last doings was the setting up of a great 
 Cross of stone in the burying-ground of the Church of the Holy 
 Trinity, which was his cathedral. The present name, it need 
 not be said, would have been unseemly while the Saint lived. 
 He had perceived, by the failure of the earthly tabernacle, that 
 the end Avas at hand : he prepared himself by Holy Com- 
 munion for the great change : and he told his brethren he must 
 soon leave them. Great sorrow fell upon them, as they knelt 
 before him, receiving his last farewell. But some among them 
 were lifted up to the thought of the supreme blessing, named in 
 the unforgettable words In death they were not divided ; and 
 they asked Kentigern if they might not all go together, the shep- 
 herd leaving not one of his flock, the father accompanied by 
 all his children. ' God's will be done,' said the saint. And as 
 his brethren watched by him through the night, expecting his 
 departure, an angel appeared and promised that it should be 
 even so. ' Because thy whole life in this world,' said the 
 heavenly messenger, 'hath been a continual martyrdom, it 
 hath pleased God that thy manner of leaving it should be easier 
 than that of other men.' 
 
 The day dawned, a day ou which yearly he had been wont 
 
58 Sf Gilei Lectures. 
 
 to baptise many into Christ : and the brethren, following the 
 instructions the angel had given, prepared a bath filled with 
 warm water, and gently placed their master therein. Then 
 they stood around, expecting. Lifting his hands and eyes to 
 heaven, and bowing his head as if to calm sleep, St Kentigern 
 was gone. They lifted out his body, and one after another 
 eagerly hastened to lie down where he had lain : where each, 
 as peacefully, died. All had passed before the water grew 
 cool. But there remained, there, or hard by, brethren enough 
 to wrap the Bishop's body for the tomb, and to lay it, with all 
 honour, at the right side of the high altar in Glasgow Cathe- 
 dral : not the present great church, but a humbler one ; yet 
 honoured by the presence in life and in death of the best 
 and greatest in the long line of the Bishops and Archbishops 
 of Glasgow. In the cemetery of his church, they said, in old 
 days, six hundred and sixty-five rest, each entitled to the good 
 name of Saint : ' And all the great men of that region,' says his 
 biographer, ' for a long time have been in the custom of being 
 buried there.' A church rose, in due time, on the hallowed 
 ground, far nobler and more beautiful than St Kentigern had 
 ever imagined : but his shrine is there ; and his name will 
 abide while church and city remain. It became needful that 
 what had been a beautiful country stream when the spot was 
 fixed on, should be hidden away from sight. The next gene- 
 ration will know only from hearsay how the Molendinar used 
 to flow under the East end of the Cathedral Church of Glasgow. 
 But still, as in past centuries, it is the way to bury hard by the 
 place where so many of Christ's saints sleep for the Great 
 Awaking. And in a solemn burying-place, that awes one by 
 its wide extent, with terraced walks and green slopes and rocky 
 graves, a very City of the Dead, the good and wise of the vast 
 City of the Living, and many of its fair and young no less, are 
 laid, as of old, beneath the shadow of the great church of St 
 Kentigern. 
 
 No record remains of his successors. But the cause pros- 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 59 
 
 pered ; and twenty-five years after St Kentigern's death the 
 nation of the Angles was brought over to Christianity by 
 Paulinus, who on Easter-day at York baptised their king. 
 Aidan, of Lindisfarne, whose diocese reached to the Frith of 
 Forth, established in Scotland two monasteries, one at Colding- 
 ham, one at Melrose. It was from this latter that the famous 
 Saint and Bishop originated, to whom the Church of Durham is 
 in a great degree indebted for its special pre-eminence. I 
 mean, of course, St Cuthbert. His parentage is unknown. 
 We first hear of him as a shepherd-boy in Lauderdale. A 
 vision led him to devote himself to the monastic life, at the age 
 of twenty-five. First, at Dull, in Strathtay : next, in the newly- 
 founded monastery of Ripon ; Cuthbert found occupation. He 
 returned to Melrose, of which House he became Prior : but in 
 the year 664 a.d. he left Melrose and became Prior of Lindis- 
 farne. In both places, his Hfe was one of severe austerity : and 
 he preached in all the country far and near. A visit which he 
 paid to the Solway is perpetuated in the name of Kirkcud- 
 bright. After twelve years at Lindisfarne, he withdrew from 
 the monastery and for nine years lived as a hermit in a rude 
 cell of unhewn stones and turf which he built for himself in the 
 island of Fame. In 685 a.d., by the choice of the king and 
 people of Northumbria, Cuthbert became Bishop of Hexham ; 
 which in the same year he exchanged for the see of Lindisfarne. 
 Only for two years did St Cuthbert hold that office. They 
 were years of indefatigable labour, and of visiting the wildest 
 parts of his diocese to preach to the people, still half-heathen. 
 Finally, feeling the approach of death, he returned to his soli- 
 tary cell at Fame, where in a few weeks he died. This was in 
 687 A.D. He was buried at Lindisfarne : but found his final 
 resting-place at Durham, ' where his Cathedral, huge and vast, 
 looks down upon the Wear.' It was more than three hundred 
 years after his death before he was laid there. When the seat 
 of the Bishops of Northumbria was removed from Lindisfarne, 
 it was first to Chester-le-Street, a few miles North of Durham : 
 
^° Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 and it was not till 995 a.d. that the great Anglican see of the 
 JNorth came to bear its present name. 
 
 But though St Cuthbert's fame be great, and though he was 
 a Scotchman, we must leave him. For his great work was not 
 done m Scotland. And my time draws to an end 
 r/^ T''r^'\^^ beginning of the eighth century, a few years 
 after St Cuthbert died, that a name begins to appear, formerly 
 wholly unknown, and of much interest in Scottish Church- 
 history : the name of Culdee. 
 
 Within the Monastic Church there grew up a tendency to 
 forsake the Monastic life for the life of the Anchorite, or 
 Hermit. Severe as were the austerities of the Monastic life 
 when lived according to its first idea, there was something 
 beyond it : there was a possible life of greater austerity still 
 Absolute loneliness might be added to the unworldly self-denial 
 of the devout monastic. And the desolate cell of St Cuthbert 
 on his uninhabited island, or the ocean-cave of St Regulus on 
 St Andrews Bay, implied a harder and sterner life than did the 
 wattled huts or even the beautiful towers of the monastery in 
 Its garden-like tract of cultivated land, where men might at 
 least fast and watch and afflict body and soul in contpany 
 Here was more to suffer, if God was to be pleased by suffering 
 self-mflicted. Here was a discipline which might further lift 
 up the soul, and cleanse the thoughts of the heart. Earlv in 
 the history of the Christian Church this feeling came in : found- 
 ing, doubtless, on something in human nature : founding too 
 on an overstrained inteipretation of certain words of'holv 
 Scripture. Having been trained for a while in a monastery 
 those who sought after perfection would pass to a fonely life 
 The famous 'unspotted from the world:' the mention of 'a 
 chosen generation, a peculiar people :' were taken to point this 
 way._ Such a life was held also to be a devotion, a cultus 
 specially pleasing to God the Father. And hence the Anchor- 
 ites came to be called Deicolc, God-wors/nJ^pers, in contrast to 
 Christtcolce, Christ-worshippers, which all Christian people were 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 61 
 
 held to be. These soUtaries were especially the people of God. 
 They were gradually brought under the monastic rule : and 
 solitaries as they were, they were associated in a sense in com- 
 munities. The Deicolce, the God-fearing (to use a word not 
 quite forgotten in homely Scotch speech), were called in 
 Ireland Ceile De : in Scotland, Keledei. Whence, plainly 
 enough, Cnldce. At Culross, at Lochleven, at Dysart, they 
 found their place. And in a spot more sacred and more 
 renowned they have left their record and memorial : in the 
 famous though httle City of St Andrews. 
 
 In 710 A.D. Nectan king of the Picts placed his kingdom 
 under the care of St Peter. But the day was to come when the 
 Patron Saint of Scotland should be, as ever since, St Andrew, 
 first-called of the Apostles, and brother of the more illustrious 
 one on whom, as a Rock, Christ would build His Church. 
 Each brother was crucified, but neither quite as was his Master. 
 The legend is that it was at Patras, in Achaia, that St Andrew 
 gained the Martyr's crown. St Regulus, a monk of Constanti- 
 nople, and perhaps Bishop of Patras, three hundred and eighty 
 years after St Andrew's death, carried away his bones, or part of 
 them. He sailed away, voyaging among the Greek Islands for 
 a year and a half, and wherever he landed erecting an oratory 
 in honour of St Andrew. Finally, after a stormy voyage towards 
 the North, on the Eve of St Michael's Day, he was wrecked on 
 the Pictish shore at a place then called Mitckross, The Pro- 
 montory of the Wild Boar. Here he erected a cross which he 
 had brought from Patras. King Hungus, or Angus, or perhaps 
 his Queen, gave the ground to God and St Andrew His Apostle, 
 ' with waters, meadows, fields, pastures, moors and woods, as a 
 gift for ever.' In the presence of the Pictish nobles. King 
 Hungus offered a turf on the altar of St^ Andrew in token of 
 the gift. And the spot, having borne in succession the names 
 of Muckross, Kilrymont, Kilrule, finally received that by which 
 it is well known in the history of Church and Nation. It 
 became St Andrews. And here, besides the group which 
 
62 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 consisted of Bishop Regulus, his Priests and Deacons, his 
 Hermits, and certain Virgins, there Avas a community of the 
 Keledei, God-fearing men, who are represented as having had 
 wives, and as performing sacred rites after a manner of their 
 own, differing from that of the Church CathoHc. How far 
 differing, it is quite impossible to say. 
 
 But the comfortless caves of the first God-fearing hermits had 
 grown into comfortable cottages, in which each Culdee dwelt 
 separately with his wife and children. Church-offices had come 
 to be hereditary. The cure was coming to be lost in the living. 
 And these metamorphosed Culdees held, as Provost and Chapter, 
 the Church of St Mary of the Rock, now the most desolate 
 among the many ruins of a city of ruins. They were likewise 
 Vicars of the Parish Church of the Holy Trinity of St Andrews : 
 still the Parish Church of that city, but now generally known by 
 the less decorous name of the Town Church. It is yet a 
 building of much interest, though it suffered miserably at the 
 hands of ignorant meddlers a hundred years ago. But it is 
 capable of restoration : and restoration will come in time, 
 though perhaps not in our time. 
 
 It is near the end of the Ninth Century that we find the first 
 mention of the Scottish Church. Certain privileges were given 
 to it by Giric, king of Pictland. Giric was driven into exile : 
 and his successors took the title of Kings of Alban: which 
 means the region from the Forth to the Spey. There was but one 
 Bishop, Avho ruled all the Scottish Church. His seat had been 
 removed from Abernethy to St Andrews : and he was called 
 Bishop of Alban. In 1005 a.d. Malcolm II. began his reign 
 over Alban, now first called Scotia. And gradually the Bishop 
 of the Scots came to be called indifferently of Alban and of St 
 Andrews. 
 
 The days of the Celtic Church were drawing to an end. We 
 have sometimes been told that the impending change was for 
 the worse : that a pure and independent National Church 
 was subjected to the tyranny of Rome. But the glory of 
 
Early Christian Scotland. 63 
 
 the Columban Church had mainly departed. Its temporahties 
 had been seized by laymen. It is a mistake to think that only 
 at the Reformation the Church of this country was plundered 
 by hypocritical robbers. Whenever the Church had anything to 
 be seized, there were greedy hands to seize it. And much 
 spiritual error was now mingled with the Church's teaching. 
 The times cried aloud for Reform. The change came mainly 
 through the work of one of the sweetest and gentlest souls 
 named in our annals, the sainted Margaret. 
 
 In 1069 A.D. King Malcolm married Margaret, an English 
 Princess, the representative of Alfred and the niece of the 
 Confessor. They were married at Dunfermline. There is but 
 one story of her touching beauty, of her unselfish and holy 
 life, of her wonderful influence over the rude people among 
 whom it was appointed her to live. ' In her presence,' says her 
 biographer, 'nothing unseemly was ever done or uttered.' She 
 was masterful, though so gentle. By goodness and sweetness 
 she got her own way. She was profoundly attached to the Church 
 of her birth and bringing-up ; and by no means liked the rude 
 ways of Scotland. Her time was short : she was married at twenty- 
 four, and died at forty-seven : died, like some of the best of the 
 race, broken-hearted. But for these years she set herself stead- 
 fastly to conform the Church of her adoption to the manner of 
 Catholic Christendom. Her tact, her energy, her quiet resolu- 
 tion, were as her loveliness in body and soul. She enlisted her 
 husband to her part. She called divers Councils : at one of 
 these she held a three-days' discussion with the clergy ; and 
 (strange to say) convinced them. The special points she 
 pressed are recorded. She shewed how Lent ought to begin 
 on Ash-Wednesday and not on the first Sunday in it : stating 
 the usual reason, too familiar for repetition. She restored the 
 observance of the Lord's Day, long neglected. It is to St 
 Margaret that Scotland owes her solemnly-kept Sundays. 
 Specially, she condemned the evil custom which had crept in of 
 celebrating the Communion without any one receiving it. The 
 
64 . S^ Gilei Lectures. 
 
 fear of eating and drinking judgment through unworthy com- 
 municating had led to a fashion so indefensible and unchristian 
 that we might doubt its possibility did it not exist, along with cer- 
 tain kindred and gloomy superstitions, in some parts of Scotland 
 still. Religious changes, when uncomplicated with political 
 events, are slow : and St Margaret had seen only the beginning of 
 the better way when she was called to her rest. In 1093 a.d. 
 her health had failed through the severe discipline in which she 
 lived. Lying one day on her bed, she had offered earnest 
 prayer : when suddenly her son Edgar entered, returned from 
 the army, which was besieging Alnwick Castle in Northumber- 
 land. ' How fares it with the King and my Edward ? ' she 
 asked : and receiving no answer, she entreated the truth might 
 be told her. ' Your husband and your son are both slain,' was 
 the reply. The Queen lifted her eyes to Heaven, and said : 
 ' Praise and blessing be to Thee, Almighty God, that Thou 
 hast been pleased to make me endure so bitter anguish in the 
 hour of my departure, thereby, as I trust, to purify me in some 
 measure from the corruption of my sins. And Thou, Lord 
 Jesu Christ, who, through the will of the Father, hast given 
 life to the world by Thy death, have mercy on me.' And, 
 saying these words, gentle St Margaret died. Never was 
 worthier life or death. 
 
 In the same year, 1093 a.d., died the last native Bishop of 
 Alban. The place remained empty for fourteen years. It was 
 a time of strife and of transition. Then a line began, bearing 
 the title of Bishops of St Andrews. The title of Archbishop 
 did not come till the latter half of the fifteenth century, St 
 Margaret's three sons, reigning in succession, the last the saintly 
 David, carried on her work. The old Celtic element went. 
 Churches were made territorial, not tribal. Parishes and 
 dioceses came in. Bishops ruled and did not merely ordain. 
 Sees were multiplied. The Culdees were absorbed, and in 
 some cases suppressed. How, it falls to my successor to tell 
 you. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE in. 
 
 MEDIEVAL SCOTLAND, 1093 to 1513 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. James Campbell, D.D., Minister of Balmerino. 
 
 'T'HE long period of four hundred and twenty years of our 
 -*- ecclesiastical history of which I have to give an account 
 is marked by the rise and growth of so many institutions, and 
 the occurrence of so many important events, as to preclude an 
 exhaustive treatment of it in the limited space at my disposal. 
 All that I can here attempt is to sketch in outline the recon- 
 struction of the Scottish Church in the twelfth century after the 
 pattern then prevailing throughout Western Christendom, and 
 the further development of this system onwards to the time 
 when, through internal corruption, it had lost its energy and 
 usefulness, and only awaited the shock by which it was to fee 
 overthrown. 
 
 Students of the history of this period enjoy one signal 
 advantage, which is denied to explorers of the previous ages. 
 Of the four centuries extending from the days of Cumin and 
 Adamnan, who wrote Lives of St Columba, to the death of 
 Malcolm Canmore, we possess scarcely any of those native 
 
66 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 contemporary chronicles in which England and Ireland are so 
 rich ; and the inquirer must have recourse to the meagre and 
 too often misleading information supplied by foreign annalists, 
 or by legends and traditions which were not committed to 
 writing till many centuries after the death of those to whom 
 they refer. But when we reach the twelfth century we enter 
 upon a new era. Land is then coming to be held by feudal 
 charter; important transactions are set forth in formal documents 
 attested by many witnesses ; the endowments and privileges 
 of religious houses and bishoprics are carefully inscribed in 
 their registers ; chronicles composed by churchmen make their 
 appearance. Vast stores of such records have been preserved : 
 very many of them have in recent years been printed ; and 
 the materials thus available bring us out of darkness into the 
 light of authentic history. 
 
 It is this light, coming in with the twelfth century, which 
 reveals the Celtic Church in a state of decay. While the 
 greater portion of the endowments of the monasteries was held 
 as private property by lay magnates who assumed the name of 
 Abbot, the duties of that office were left to a Prior presiding 
 usually over twelve Culdees, who enjoyed only certain minor 
 revenues. This was substantially the state of things at St 
 Andrews, Abernethy, Brechin, Monifieth, Dunkeld, and other 
 places. In some cases the monastic community came to be 
 represented by a solitary priest. In course of time the 
 Culdee clergy were superseded, as we shall see, or otherwise 
 disappeared. 
 
 The Church lands which were secularised were in some 
 instances very extensive. The hereditary possessor of the 
 great monastery of Applecross was able, with his vassals, to 
 give Alexander II. such powerful assistance in war that he was 
 rewarded by being created Earl of Ross. The lay Abbot of 
 Glendochart ranked with the Earls of Atholl and Menteith. 
 Most of the possessions of the monastery of Abernethy were 
 held by a layman named Orm, ancestor of the baronial house 
 
Medmval Scotland. 67 
 
 of Abernethy. Crinan, the lay Abbot of Dunkeld, married 
 Bethoc, daughter of Malcolm II., and thus became the pro- 
 genitor of our Scottish kings. The Church lands were fre- 
 quently termed Abthane — a word which some have erroneously 
 understood as denoting an office — and in the name Appin, still 
 applied to two widely separated districts, we have a memorial 
 of the ancient monasteries of Dull and Lismore.^ 
 
 The assimilation of the Scottish Church to the English, and 
 thus to the Roman model, begun by St Margaret, and con- 
 tinued by her three sons and their successors, involved the 
 extinction of the remaining Culdee clergy. But neither the 
 causes which led to this change, nor the means by which it 
 was effected, can be rightly understood without reference to a 
 great though peaceful revolution which had commenced in the 
 reign of Malcolm Canmore, and was destined to have a lasting 
 influence both on Church and State. This was a migration, on 
 a very extensive scale, of settlers from England. The tyranny 
 of William the Conqueror drove many of his subjects, both 
 Saxons and Normans, to seek a refuge in the northern king- 
 dom, which possessed for the former an additional attrac- 
 tion after the Scottish sovereign's marriage to the Princess 
 Margaret, sister of Edgar Atheling, the heir of the Saxon line. 
 This immigration was greatly encouraged both by Malcolm 
 himself and his successors, whose education and tastes were 
 for the most part English. During several reigns the tide con- 
 tinued to flow across the Border. The land was being filled 
 with strangers ; especially its southern and eastern districts. 
 The immigrants, many of whom were persons of rank, received 
 grants of land from the Crown. They married Scottish 
 
 ' I may here once for all refer to the following works as the authorities 
 I have chiefly consulted, besides the standard Histories and Chartularies of 
 Religious Houses : Mr Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. ii. ; Innes's Sketches of 
 Early Scotch History ; the same author's Scotland in the Middle Ages; 
 W. E. Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings; Keith's Historical 
 Catalogue of Scottish Bishops ; and Spottiswoode's Religious Houses. 
 
68 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 heiresses. They obtained the highest public offices. The 
 power and wealth of the kingdom were passing away from 
 the Celtic people, who were henceforth to hold a subordinate 
 place in the land they had ruled. Throughout a large 
 portion of the country the Celtic language died out : the Celtic 
 population was absorbed ; and Scottish customs and insti- 
 tutions were being conformed to those of England. It was 
 the commencement of a process which has been going on, 
 with some interruptions, ever since : which is going on now, 
 and with increasing rapidity, as intercourse with the South is 
 becoming ever more extended. 
 
 The remodelling of the Scottish Church was carried out 
 mainly by the establishment of Parishes, and the introduction 
 of Diocesan Episcopacy and the Monastic Orders of the Church 
 of Rome. These several processes went on simultaneously, 
 and were closely connected with each other. But a distinct 
 idea of them can perhaps be best given by describing them 
 separately. The formation of Parishes may be taken first. 
 
 The organisation of the Celtic Church was monastic, not 
 parochial. In many cases a tribe or a province possessed its 
 own monastery, endowed by some former chief, and supplying 
 Christian rites to the people around. There were also founda- 
 tions which did not possess this tribal character. Sometimes a 
 monastery had under its charge a group of neighbouring churches. 
 Mortlach, in Aberdeenshire, with its five churches, was an 
 instance of such an arrangement. Those structures have perished. 
 Yet memorials of not a few of their founders still remain. We 
 can often recognise the name of the first evangelist of a district 
 in the saint to whom its church was afterwards dedicated ; 
 in the well at which he baptised his converts ; in the ' fair ' or 
 festival (for such is the original meaning of the term) held on 
 his ' day,' and still known by his name ; in the stone seat on 
 which the good man was wont to rest ; or in the cave to which 
 he retired for shelter or meditation. Such memorials are 
 numerous throughout the Scottish mainland and islands. 
 
McdicBval Scotland. 69 
 
 Those primitive churches must, in many cases, have practi- 
 cally served as * parish ' churches by furnishing rehgious 
 ordinances to the inhabitants of a definite territory. But 
 parochial churches in the proper sense, mainly supported by 
 tithes drawn from the district which they supply, were almost 
 unknown till about the commencement of the twelfth century. 
 The formation of parishes was promoted by the sovereigns, 
 whose efforts were zealously seconded by the Norman and 
 Saxon settlers. The proprietor of a manor built a church, 
 or adopted one already existing, for the use of himself 
 and his people, endowed it with the tithes of his land, and 
 nominated a priest, with the sanction of the bishop, to 
 serve it. His manor came to be regarded as a parish; and 
 this was the origin of parishes, tithes, and patronage. We 
 have an interesting example of the erection and endowment of 
 a church, and the formation of a parish, in the case of Ednam, 
 in the Merse. Thor, one of the new settlers from England, 
 states, in a charter granted by him, that ' King Edgar gave to 
 me Ednaham, waste, which I, by his assistance and my own 
 money, have inhabited ; and I have built from the foundation 
 a church, which the king caused to be dedicated in honour of 
 St Cuthbert, and endowed it with one plough of land.'^ It 
 appears that the tithes of the manor were also given to the 
 church of Ednam — in short it constituted a parish. It is the 
 first parish of whose formation we possess a distinct record. 
 Six centuries later it was the birthplace of the poet of the 
 Seasons, his father being its Minister. 
 
 Reasons of convenience frequently caused parishes to be 
 subdivided. If a manor was extensive, one or more chapels 
 would be erected in distant parts of it for the accommodation 
 of the people residing there ; and these chapels would in course 
 of time acquire parochial rights. Or if an estate was divided 
 among several proprietors, each of them would build a church 
 
 ^ N^ational MSS. of Scotland, vol. i. No. xiv. 
 
70 Sf Gi/es* Lectures. 
 
 for his own people. In some cases a parish intersected by a 
 river, or by mountains, required a church for each of its 
 divisions. If a burgh arose within a parish, a new church 
 would be required for itself. Thus the parish of Edinburgh 
 was taken out of St Cuthbert's. 
 
 The institution of Parishes was the most valuable part of the 
 organisation of the Mediaeval Church ; and it has proved to be 
 the most lasting. No better expedient could have been devised 
 for the instruction of the whole population. It is an interesting 
 circumstance that after all the revolutions through which the 
 Scottish Church has passed since the twelfth century, the 
 Parochial system is at the present time not only in vigorous 
 operation, but continuously undergoing that extension which is 
 rendered necessary by the increase of the population. Its 
 efficiency in the Middle Ages was, however, grievously impaired, 
 as we shall see, by the bestowal of the revenues of Parish 
 churches on Monks and Bishops. 
 
 Another part of the process of assimilating the Scottish to the 
 English Church was the introduction of Diocesan Episcopacy, 
 which, it is now generally allowed, had no existence in Scotland 
 till the twelfth century. The see of St Andrews — as yet the sole 
 ' bishopric of the Scots ' — first claims our attention. On the 
 accession of King Alexander, he proceeded to fill up the vacancy 
 which had existed since the death of the last Celtic bishop, by 
 appointing, with the consent of the clergy and people, Turgot, 
 Prior of Durham, who had been his mother's confessor and 
 biographer. This was the first of a series of Englishmen who 
 filled the see. His appointment led to a controversy involving 
 the independence of the Scottish Church. The Primate of 
 York claimed the right of consecrating Turgot, on the plea 
 that the province of York embraced the whole of Scotland. 
 The King and clergy resisted this plea. The matter was ulti- 
 mately settled by a compromise. Turgot was consecrated by 
 the Archbishop of York, the rights of both Churches being 
 expressly reserved. On the death of Turgot, Alexander, 
 
Medicevai Scotland. 7* 
 
 in order to prevent a repetition of the claims of York, 
 requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to recommend a fit 
 person for the office. Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, was 
 accordingly sent to St Andrews. But he, after his election, pro- 
 posed to go back to Canterbury for consecration. The King, 
 being resolved to maintain the independence of the Church, 
 indignantly refused his consent to such a step. After a 
 lengthened dispute, Eadmer resigned his appointment, and 
 returned to Canterbury. Ultimately, Robert, Prior of Scone, 
 was appointed to the see of St Andrews, and, after Alexander's 
 death, was consecrated by the Primate of York on conditions 
 similar to those agreed on in Turgot's case. Arnold, the next 
 bishop, was consecrated in the Cathedral Church of St Regulus 
 — King David being present — by the Bishop of Moray as Papal 
 legate, though the pretensions of York were not abandoned. 
 
 The Church of St Regulus, with its square tower — to which 
 a fabulous antiquity was at one time ascribed — was erected 
 by Bishop Robert between the years 1127 and 1144. It 
 was not twenty years old when Bishop Arnold commenced the 
 building of the greater Cathedral, which, however, was not 
 completed till 13 18, when it was consecrated in presence of 
 King Robert Bruce, who then endowed it with a hundred 
 merks, out of gratitude for his victory at Bannockburn. 
 
 Two new dioceses were created by Alexander I. — those of 
 Moray and Dunkeld. The former embraced the country 
 beyond the river Spey. The see was successively at Birney, 
 Kinneddor, and Spynie. In 1224 it was removed to Elgin. 
 At Dunkeld there had been a monastery from very early times. 
 Here Kenneth Macalpin, about the year 849, founded a church, 
 and transferred to it the primacy of lona, with a portion of the 
 relics of St Columba ; and it had been the seat of the Bishopric 
 of the Picts, which was afterwards removed to Abernethy, and 
 thence to St Andrews. Cormac, who, it appears, was now 
 Abbot of Dunkeld, was made the first bishop of the diocese ; 
 and the Culdees were superseded by a Chapter of secular 
 
7^ Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Canons. The diocese was of vast extent, and embraced Argyll, 
 as well as many detached places where there were anciently 
 Columban houses, including lona itself. 
 
 King David zealously pursued the same policy by still further 
 dividing the country into dioceses. While heir to the throne, 
 as Prince of Scottish Cumbria, he had founded or restored, 
 about the year 1 1 1 6, the bishopric of Glasgow, and appointed 
 to it John, who had been his tutor. John was consecrated by 
 the Pope, though, as in the case of St Andrews, a claim of 
 jurisdiction had been advanced by the Archbishop of York. 
 The diocese of Glasgow extended from the Clyde to the Solvvay 
 and the English Border, and from Lothian to the river Urr, and 
 included also the districts of Lennox and Teviotdale. On the 
 spot where St Kentigern had preached the Gospel by the 
 Molendinar Burn, Bishop John erected a Cathedral Church, 
 which was dedicated in 1136. But this was afterwards burned 
 down, and the crypt and choir of a new Cathedral — the stately 
 structure still existing — were completed by Bishop Jocelin in 
 1 197. The nave was erected between 1233 and 1258. 
 
 On David's accession to the throne he proceeded to create 
 additional dioceses ; and before his death six other sees had 
 been founded — those of Aberdeen, Ross, Caithness, Dunblane, 
 Brechin, and Galloway. 
 
 The bishopric of Aberdeen embraced the district between the 
 Dee and the Spey; and the old Columban monasteries of 
 Mortlach and Cloveth formed part of its endowment. — The 
 seat of the diocese of Ross was at first either at Rosemarky, 
 where a monastery had been founded in the sixth century, or at 
 Fortrose. — The remote province of Caithness, which embraced 
 the territory forming the modern counties of Caithness and 
 Sutherland, was held by the Norse Earls of Orkney in nominal 
 subjection to the Scottish crown. In founding the bishopric 
 of Caithness, David probably designed to strengthen his own 
 authority in the district. The seat of the diocese was at 
 Dornoch. John, the second bishop, had his tongue and eyes 
 
Medieval Scotland. *r|^ 
 
 dug out at Skrabister by the Earl of Orkney. Adam, his suc- 
 cessor, who had been too rigorous in exacting his tithes of 
 butter, was set upon by the people on a Sunday, apparently 
 with the connivance of the Earl, and burned to death in his own 
 kitchen at Halkirk. For this outrage Alexander II. inflicted 
 severe punishment. — The see of Dunblane was founded by the 
 Earl Palatine of Stratherne. The diocese appears to have been 
 formed chiefly out of that of Dunkeld. — At Brechin a church 
 had been built towards the end of the tenth century ; and it is 
 supposed that the abbot of the monastery connected with it was 
 made, as in the case of Dunkeld, the first bishop of the new 
 diocese; while the Abbacy passed to his son, a layman, and 
 became hereditary in his family. The Prior and Culdees 
 formed for a time the Bishop's Chapter, till they were superseded 
 by secular Canons. — At Candida Casa, or Whithorn, where St 
 Ninian had built his white church, a see had been founded or 
 restored in the eighth century; and as Galloway was then 
 subject to the kings of Northumbria, the bishop was a suffragan 
 of York. The see, long disused, was again restored by Fergus, 
 Lord of Galloway, about the end of David's reign. The bishop 
 was still subject to York, and remained so till the fourteenth 
 century. The diocese of Galloway embraced the modern 
 counties of Wigtown and Kirkcudbright, west of the river Urr. 
 
 The Diocesan system of the Church was now nearly com- 
 pleted. The only bishopric created after David's reign was 
 that of Lismore or Argyll, in 1222. It was formed out of the 
 diocese of Dunkeld, and embraced the mainland of Argyll. Its 
 first bishop received the appointment because he could speak 
 the Gaelic language of the people. The see of the diocese was 
 first at Muckairn, on the southern shore of Loch Etive, and was 
 thence removed to the island of Lismore, which was transferred 
 from the diocese of the Isles to that of Argyll. The Western 
 Isles originally formed part of the bishopric of Sodor and Man 
 — 'Sodor,' or the 'Sudreys,' signifying the southern, that is, 
 those now called the Western Islands or Hebrides, as dis- 
 
74 S^ Giles^ Ledurei. 
 
 tinguished from the northern islands of Orkney and Shetland— 
 and the bishop was a suffragan of the Archbishop of Drontheim, 
 metropolitan of Norway. When Man was afterwards taken 
 possession of by England, and the Western Isles were united 
 to Scotland, the diocese seems to have been divided into two, 
 and the northern diocese was united to the Scottish Church. 
 The Benedictine Abbey Church of lona was used as its 
 Cathedral, though lona itself continued to belong to the diocese 
 of Dunkeld after the creation of that of Argyll. From about 
 the year 1498, the Abbacy of lona and the Bishopric of 
 the Isles were held by the same person. In 1469, Orkney and 
 Shetland were acquired by Scotland ; and soon afterwards the 
 diocese of Orkney, which had been subject to Drontheim, was 
 annexed to the Scottish Church. 
 
 Most of the dioceses were divided into several Rural 
 Deaneries : St Andrews and Glasgow into two Archdeaconries 
 each; and these again were subdivided into Deaneries. The 
 various sees were in course of time provided with Cathedral 
 churches, and with Chapters usually embracing a Dean, 
 archdeacon, chancellor, precentor, treasurer, and other ofhcials. 
 In the dioceses of Brechin, Ross, and Caithness, the chapter 
 was at first composed of Culdees ; but these were afterwards 
 displaced, and ultimately a dean and secular canons formed the 
 chapters of all the dioceses except St Andrews and Galloway, 
 where their places were supplied by the prior and canons- 
 regular of the monasteries there established. The cathedral 
 constitutions were mostly borrowed from England. Glasgow 
 and Dunkeld followed the model of Salisbury; Moray, Aber- 
 deen, and Caithness, those of Lincoln. The Breviary and 
 Missal of Salisbury formed the ritual of all the Scottish dioceses. 
 It is believed that organs and choirs were introduced into 
 Scotland in the thirteenth century. 
 
 Though the country had been divided into dioceses, it had as 
 yet no Metropolitan or Primate. King David had endeavoured 
 to procure from the Pope the erection of St Andrews into an 
 
Medi(zval Scotland. ^ % 
 
 archbishopric ; but in consequence of the opposition of York, 
 the attempt was unsuccessful. It was renewed by Malcohn 
 IV., with no better result. In 1188, however, Pope Clement 
 III. issued a bull by which the Scottish Church was declared 
 independent of all foreign control, save that of the See of 
 Rome. Having no metropolitan to preside over them, the 
 Scottish clergy could not hold Provincial Councils without the 
 presence of a Papal legate — an official whose visits and pecuniary 
 demands were, both to the sovereigns and the clergy, objects of 
 special aversion. In 1225, Pope Honorius III. authorised the 
 holding of Provincial Councils without the presence of a legate, 
 for the carrying out of the decrees of General Councils, and 
 other purposes of discipline. Accordingly these councils now 
 met annually for three days when necessary, and were opened 
 with a sermon preached by each of the bishops in his turn. 
 They were composed of all the bishops, abbots, and priors ; to 
 whom were added in later times representatives of the capitular, 
 conventual, and collegiate clergy. One of the bishops was 
 chosen for a year as Conservator of the canons or statutes of 
 the council, with power to enforce them. The Conservator 
 also summoned the council, and presided in it, or, in his 
 absence, the oldest bishop. Two doctors of the civil law 
 attended as representatives of the sovereign. In course of 
 time these Councils framed a body of statutes which regulated 
 the proceedings of the Church till near the Reformation.^ In 
 1472, the Pope at length erected St Andrews into an arch- 
 bishopric, with the other twelve bishops as its suffragans. As 
 this was done on the suit of Bishop Patrick Graham, without the 
 knowledge or consent of the king or bishops, a conflict ensued 
 which proved fatal to him ; and he — the first Archbishop — ended 
 his days as a prisoner in Lochleven. In 1487, Schevez, his suc- 
 cessor, was made Primate of all Scotland and legate naius. Five 
 
 ^ They have now been printed under the title Concilia Scotia, with 
 Preface by Dr Joseph Robertson (Bannatyne Club Series). 
 
76 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 years later the Bishop of Glasgow was raised to the rank of 
 Archbishop, with the bishops of Dunkeld, Dunblane, Galloway, 
 and Argyll as his suffragans. These proceedings led to bitter 
 strife between the two archbishops, which continued till the 
 Reformation. 
 
 There were also Synods of the clergy of each diocese, pre- 
 sided over by their own bishop. The Diocesan Synod of 
 St Andrews {Scottice, Senzie or Seinye) was held either at St 
 Andrews in the Senzie Hall, or at Edinburgh in the Abbey 
 Church of Holyrood. 
 
 The next part of the process of remodelling the Scottish 
 Church which I have to describe is the introduction of the 
 Monastic Orders of the Church of Rome, with their more 
 thorough organisation and severer discipline, in place of the 
 now effete Culdees. This movement was connected with 
 a remarkable revival of deep religious feeling, which had 
 recently occurred throughout Western Christendom, and now 
 reached our country, impelling vast numbers of devotees to 
 embrace the monastic life, which they regarded as the highest 
 form of piety. The discipline of the cloister was observed 
 with increasing strictness. One leader after another appeared 
 in different countries of Europe, practising some new form of 
 asceticism, whose ' rule' was quickly and enthusiastically adopted 
 by thousands of followers. Those who did not themselves 
 assume the monkish garb, reckoned it a duty and a privilege 
 to found, or to contribute to the endowment of a religious 
 house. Kings and nobles bestowed on these establishments 
 their most fertile lands, and built for the dwellings, and for the 
 religious rites of their inmates, the most stately and beautiful 
 edifices. The people regarded the monks with veneration and 
 affection, and believed that their prayers possessed extraordi- 
 nary efficacy. The Monastic Orders enjoyed the special favour 
 and protection of the Roman Pontiffs, of whose power and 
 supremacy they were, in turn, the devoted supporters. In 
 bestowing endowments on a religious house, the donors acted 
 
MedicBval Scotland. 7 7 
 
 under the combined influence of piety and superstition, • Some- 
 times they would stipulate for the privilege of being buried 
 within its sacred precincts : or they hoped at some future day 
 to find in the cloister a retreat from the strife and cares of the 
 world, A powerful motive to liberality was the reward which 
 they believed this would secure for them ; and benefactions were 
 usually bestowed for the salvation of the souls of the donor, 
 his parents and ancestors, his children and descendants, as 
 well as for the glory of God and the honour of the blessed 
 Virgin, or of the Saint to whom the house was dedicated. 
 
 The members of the monastic fraternities were called 
 Regulars, as being bound by the ' rule ' {reguld) of their Order ; 
 and were known as Canons, Monks, or Friars — all other clergy 
 being styled Seculars. The two most celebrated Orders were 
 the Augustinian canons, who followed the rule of St Augustine ; 
 and the Benedictine monks, who adopted that of St Benedict. 
 Each of these embraced several species, whose names were 
 derived from their founder, the place where they took their rise, 
 their dress, or some other circumstance. The Augustinians 
 comprehended the Regular Canons of St Augustine, the Prje- 
 monstratensians, the Red Friars, the Dominicans or Black Friars, 
 and the Canons of St Anthony. The Benedictines included 
 those of Marmoutier, styled Black Monks ; of Cluny ; and of 
 Tiron ; the Cistercians, or White Monks ; and the Monks of 
 Vallis-caulium. There were also the Carmelites, or White 
 Friars ; the Franciscans, or Grey Friars ; the Carthusians, and 
 others. Of these numerous Orders, most had ample endow- 
 ments for their maintenance. Such were termed Rented 
 Religious. The Dominicans, Carmelites, and Franciscans, who 
 subsisted chiefly on alms, were called Mendicant or Begging 
 Friars. The greater houses were styled Abbeys ; the lesser. 
 Priories : presided over by an Abbot and Prior respectively. 
 An Abbot's deputy in his own monastery was also called a 
 Prior. Many of the Priories were subject to the larger Abbeys. 
 
 While the several Orders differed from each other in various 
 
78 iS/ cues' Lectures, 
 
 ways, they were all bound by the three rules of poverty, chastity, 
 and obedience. Their members could hold no private pro- 
 perty, but were permitted in their corporate capacity to receive 
 lands, and other possessions and privileges. They were all 
 subject to strict regulations in regard to their food and dress, 
 and the disposal of their time. Daily they performed their 
 devotional services in church seven times together, and also 
 assembled in the Chapter-house for discipline. During meals 
 the Holy Scriptures or other edifying books were read aloud to 
 the assembled brethren by one of their number. The rest of 
 the day was devoted to some useful occupation, such as the 
 copying and illumination of manuscripts, works of art connected 
 with the buildings or decorations of the monastery, or the prac- 
 tice of gardening and agriculture. Members of the brotherhood 
 were set apart to certain conventual offices, such as chamber- 
 lain, refectioner, cellarer, almoner, infirmarer, hospitaller, 
 librarian, treasurer, porter, master of the novices. For the 
 management of their secular business, a certain number of 
 lay brethren, called converts, were admitted into the community. 
 Over all ruled the Abbot or Prior, chosen by the suffrages of the 
 monks, and wielding extensive authority. The Superiors of the 
 greater houses possessed the privilege of wearing the mitre, 
 which carried with it the power of conferring minor Orders on 
 the members ; and in general the monasteries were independent 
 of the bishop of the diocese, and were accountable only to the 
 General Chapter of the Order, subject to review by the Pope. 
 
 Though St Margaret founded a church at Dunfermline, 
 neither she nor her royal husband founded any Religious house. 
 Her sons, in different degrees, distinguished themselves in this 
 way. King Edgar, about the year 1097, restored the monastery 
 of Coldingham, which, after experiencing a strange and romantic 
 history, had for centuries been ruined and abandoned. He 
 erected it into a priory, and placed in it Benedictine monks, 
 whom he brought from Durham — the first of that order who 
 were introduced into Scotland. After a brief reign, Edgar was 
 
Mediceval Scotland. 79 
 
 succeeded by Alexander I., who pursued a similar policy. At 
 Scone there had been a monastery of great antiquity, and there 
 was now a church dedicated to the Holy Trinity — a place 
 rendered famous by the coronation there of the Scottish kings 
 on that ' fatal stone ' which was believed to have served Jacob 
 for his pillow, and still lends a peculiar interest to the Coronation 
 Chair at Westminster. Here Alexander founded an abbey for 
 canons-regular of St Augustine, who were now brought into 
 Scotland for the first time, from St Oswald's, near Pontefract. 
 Robert, an Englishman, was the first Superior of the house. The 
 king bestowed on the new foundation a priory of the same 
 order, which he established in an island in Loch Tay, where his 
 consort. Queen Sibylla, daughter of Henry I. of England, was 
 buried. Yet another religious house owed its existence to 
 Alexander. Having on one occasion, while crossing the Forth 
 during a storm, been cast on the island of ^monia, where 
 there lived a hermit who followed the discipline of St Columba ; 
 and having with his attendants subsisted for three days on the 
 hermit's humble fare of milk, small fishes, and shell-fish, the 
 king founded there a monastery, which he dedicated to St 
 Columba, to whom he believed he owed his escape from 
 shipwreck ; and the island thereafter was known by the name 
 of Inchcolm, or Columba's Isle. One of the abbots of this 
 house was Walter Bower, the continuator of Fordun's Scoti- 
 chronicon. 
 
 With the view of establishing at St Andrews a monastic 
 fraternity of the Anglican type, Alexander restored to its 
 church the lands called the Boar's Chase ; and caused 
 ' His comely steed of Araby, 
 Saddled and bridled costlily,' 
 
 and covered with a mantle of rich velvet, to be led up to the 
 altar, and, along with his Turkish armour, shield and spear of 
 silver, and many precious jewels, presented as a symbol of pos- 
 session. The monastery was, however, not actually founded 
 till the following reign. 
 
Sf ales' Lectures. 
 
 The most munificent patron of the monks was the saintly 
 King David ; and many of the houses founded by him also 
 were restorations of decayed Columban institutions. While 
 he was yet Prince of Cumbria, he founded two monasteries 
 — those of Selkirk and Jedburgh. The former was soon 
 removed to Kelso, and was supplied with Reformed Bene- 
 dictine monks from Tiron in France. Its mitred Abbots 
 at one time claimed precedence of the heads of all the 
 religious houses of the kingdom. To Jedburgh David 
 brought Augustinian canons-regular from Beauvais. After his 
 accession to the throne, he converted his mother's church at 
 Dunfermline into a monastery for Benedictine monks, whom he 
 brought from Canterbury, and its first abbot was Geoffrey, 
 Prior of Canterbury. The abbey of Dunfermline succeeded 
 lona as the burial-place of the Scottish kings. David also 
 founded for Augustinian canons-regular the abbey of Holy- 
 rood, so called from the famous Black Rood which he presented 
 to it. This crucifix, which was believed to inclose a portion of 
 the true Cross, was brought into Scotland by St Margaret. For 
 canons of the same Order brought from Aroise, near Arras, King 
 David founded Cambuskenneth Abbey ; and for Cistercian 
 monks, Melrose, Newbottle, and Kinloss ; besides several more 
 monasteries for other Orders. Melrose got its monks from 
 Rievaux in Yorkshire, and was the mother of most of the 
 Cistercian houses in Scotland. 
 
 In 1 144, King David co-operated with Robert, Bishop of St 
 Andrews, in founding in that city a priory for Augustinian 
 canons, who were brought thither from Scone. A great portion 
 of the secularised revenues of the ancient monastery of St 
 Andrews — of which King Constantine, two centuries before, 
 having retired from the world, had become the Abbot — was 
 eventually bestowed on this new community of regulars, who 
 were placed there that they might supersede the Culdees. 
 King David now ordained that the latter should be admitted 
 into the Priory as canons, if they were willing to become 
 
Mediaeval Scotland. 8 1 
 
 canons : if unwilling, they were to be allowed to retain their 
 possessions during their life; and as they died out, canons- 
 regular were to be instituted in their place, and their endow- 
 ments transferred to the Priory. Soon afterwards, the Pope 
 deprived the Culdees of their right of electing the bishop. 
 They, however, stoutly resisted these changes, and for more 
 than a century maintained, with more or less success, their 
 right to share with the canons in the bishop's election. It was 
 not till 1273 they were finally deprived of this privilege. In 
 1258 they lost their position as vicars of the parish church of 
 St Andrews, and became eventually known as the Provost and 
 prebendaries of ' Our Lady College of the Heugh,' or the 
 ' Church of the Blessed Mary of the Rock ' — the Chapel-Royal 
 of Scotland — the Provost continuing to be instituted, not by the 
 Bishop, but by the finger-ring of the lay patron, the King of 
 the Scots. The Priory of St Andrews rapidly rose to the first 
 position, in wealth and honours, among the religious houses of 
 the kingdom. Its Superior was mitred, and in the time of 
 King James I. obtained precedence in Parliament above all 
 Abbots and Priors. 
 
 Harsher treatment than that received by the Culdees of St 
 Andrews was now the lot of their brethren of Lochleven, who 
 had there for centuries kept alive the knowledge of religion, 
 and had received endowments from several Celtic bishops and 
 sovereigns, including Macbeth and his wife Gruoch. In the 
 tenth century this interesting community, with Ronan their 
 abbot, had made over their monastery to the Bishop of St 
 Andrews, on condition that he would supply them with food 
 and raiment. This transaction enabled Bishop Robert now 
 to bestow on the priory of St Andrews the abbacy of Loch- 
 leven, with all its revenues, and its" little library of sixteen 
 manuscript volumes — the names of which are preserved — that a 
 body of canons-regular might be there established. In a 
 charter to the same effect, King David ordains that ' the 
 Culdees who shall be found there, if they consent to live as 
 
 F 
 
8 2 S^ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 regulars, shall be permitted to remain in society with, and 
 subject to the others ; but should any of them be disposed to 
 offer resistance, his will and pleasure is, that such shall be 
 expelled from the island.' A priory of Augustinian canons was 
 now therefore settled in Lochleven. One of its Superiors was 
 Andrew Wyntoun, author of the Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland. 
 The Culdees of Monimusk, who also were connected with the 
 church of St Andrews, were in a somewhat similar manner 
 superseded by a community of Augustinian canons-regular, as 
 were likewise the Culdees of Abernethy. 
 
 To King David also is ascribed the introduction into 
 Scotland of the Military Orders — the Templars and Knights of 
 St John — instituted for the defence of the Temple of Jerusalem 
 against the infidels, and for the entertainment of pilgrims. 
 The principal house of the former order was at Temple in Mid- 
 lothian, and that of the latter at Torphichen. The Templars 
 were suppressed by the Pope in 13 12, and their possessions, 
 which were numerous in this country, were bestowed on the 
 Knights of St John. 
 
 The most important of the royal foundations subsequent to 
 David's reign was the great and richly endowed abbey of 
 Arbroath, begun by William the Lion in 1178, seven years after 
 the death of Thomas k Becket, to whom it was afterwards dedi- 
 cated. Its founder was buried before its high altar in 12 14. 
 Fifteen years later, his widow, Queen Ermengarde, founded a 
 Cistercian abbey at Balmerino. This house, which was beauti- 
 fully situated on the south shore of the Firth of Tay, was dedi- 
 cated to St Mary and St Edward the Confessor, and was asso- 
 ciated with memories of subsequent Scottish queens. Before 
 the high altar of the Abbey Church, Queen Ermengarde was 
 interred in the year 1233, in presence of her son Alexander 
 II. Towards the end of the twelfth century, the abbey of 
 Lindores was 'founded for Tironensian monks by David, Earl 
 of Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion, on his return 
 from the Crusades. 
 
Medieval Scotland. 83 
 
 The nobles of the land followed the example thus set by the 
 royal family, by founding other religious houses, or by adding 
 to the endowments of those already existing. Next to King 
 David, the most munificent friend of the monks was Fergus, the 
 semi-independent Lord of Galloway, who founded monasteries 
 at Soulseat — to which he brought canons from Premontre — 
 Whithorn, St Mary's Isle, Tungland, Holywood, and Dun- 
 drennan ; and on being defeated in an insurrection which 
 he raised against Malcolm IV,, was compelled to end his days 
 as a canon of Holyrood. The abbey of Paisley — at first 
 a priory — was founded for Cluniac monks who came from 
 Wenlock in Shropshire, by Walter, son of Alan, the Lord High 
 Steward. Reginald, Lord of the Isles, founded at lona a Bene- 
 dictine abbey and nunnery. It is supposed that the Culdees in 
 lona adopted the Benedictine rule, and became monks of this 
 abbey. The existing ruins on the island are the remains of these 
 two houses. The last abbey founded in Scotland was a Cister- 
 cian house in Galloway; and its name was derived from a 
 touching circumstance. The Prior of Lochleven tells us that 
 Devorgilla, daughter of the Lord of Galloway, and wife of John 
 Balliol, founded this monastery in the year 1275 ; and that when 
 her husband died, she had his heart embalmed and placed in a 
 coffer of ivory, which was daily set before her as a memento of 
 him who was gone. And she gave orders that when she died, 
 she should be buried in the abbey she had founded, with the 
 coffer placed upon her breast. Her commands were obeyed, 
 and the house received the name of Sweet Heart Abbey. 
 
 The number of monks in each house varied at different 
 times. It is said there were in Melrose, in 1542, two hun- 
 dred. Probably the larger monasteries contained usually fifty 
 or sixty. The number was greatly diminished on the eve of 
 the Reformation. 
 
 Of nunneries of various orders upwards of twenty were 
 established in Scotland. We know little of the history of those 
 communities of pious virgins who 'departed not from the temple, 
 
84 Sf Gt/es' Lectures. 
 
 but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.' Let 
 us hope that many of their members were successful in securing 
 those higher spiritual attainments for which they erroneously 
 forsook the innocent enjoyments, and declined the responsi- 
 bilities of life. 
 
 In the foregoing brief survey I have mentioned by name 
 only some of the chief monasteries. The various orders of 
 Augustinian canons had forty-eight, and those of Benedictine 
 monks thirty-one houses. There were at least a hundred and 
 fifty religious houses of all kinds, including those yet to be 
 specified. Many of them were richly endowed. A large por- 
 tion of the best soil of the country was in the hands of the 
 regular clergy. And the effects of this at first cannot be 
 regarded as injurious to the nation. The monks not only gave 
 much attention to agriculture, but were the first to grant long 
 leases of their lands on easy terms to tenants, who were not, 
 like those of lay proprietors, bound to give military service, 
 except on very special occasions. The clergy had a direct 
 interest in the maintenance of peace, and could not be deprived 
 of their estates by forfeiture or other sudden changes, which 
 were productive of great misery to the tenants of lay lords. 
 The monks were the friends of the serfs, the poor, and the 
 helpless ; their charity and hospitality were bestowed with 
 lavish profusion. Each monastery was a centre from which 
 religious and civilising influences of various kinds radiated into 
 the surrounding district. An important service rendered by 
 the monks was their cultivation of learning at a time when no 
 Scottish baron could sign his own name, or would have 
 reckoned it other than a degradation to possess such a 
 monkish accomplishment. In the monasteries the flickering 
 lamp of knowledge was kept alive when 'there was darkness 
 over the land, even darkness which might be felt.* 
 
 Having become possessed of enormous wealth, the monks 
 began to relax the strictness of their discipline, and declined 
 
MedicBval Scotla7id. 85 
 
 in popular esteem. It was for this reason the Mendicant 
 Orders were instituted. The Dominican and Franciscan Friars 
 took their rise in the thirteenth century. The latter were also 
 termed ' Fratres Minores, Minor Friars, or Minorites. The 
 Dominicans were specially styled Preaching Friars, because 
 they devoted themselves particularly to preaching, which was 
 scandalously neglected by the clergy. The Popes, perceiving 
 how admirably the Mendicant Orders were fitted to strengthen 
 the Church, permitted them to preach wheresoever they chose, 
 without license from the bishop, or consent of the curates, and 
 made them responsible to the Papal see alone. They also 
 granted to them the right of administering the sacraments ; of 
 hearing confession and granting absolution; and of selling 
 indulgences in order to eke out their means of subsistence. 
 The attention of the people was arrested by the appearance of 
 barefooted men, wearing a coarse robe and cowl, with a rope 
 round their waist, expatiating on the love of God, and the 
 duties of religion. Supplying a real want at the time, the 
 Friars became rapidly popular ; and their influence was soon 
 felt throughout the whole of Christendom. They were the 
 favourite spiritual guides of the people, especially the more 
 ignorant, who everywhere flocked to their churches. This 
 brought upon them the hatred of the bishops and parochial 
 incumbents, whom they supplanted in popular esteem, and 
 whose flocks they drew away from their ministrations. They 
 soon exhibited the usual effects of such prosperity. They 
 were filled with pride. They poured contempt on the other 
 clergy. Their own fraternities were split into contending 
 factions. At length, by the laxity of their morals, they 
 became, in a greater degree even than the monks, a source of 
 weakness and scandal to the Church, and were objects of 
 animosity and ridicule to all who longed for its reformation. 
 
 In the reign of Alexander II. the favour which had hitherto 
 been shewn towards canons and monks began to be trans- 
 ferred to the Friars, who had eventually forty-six houses of the 
 
86 St Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 various Orders, which were mostly situated in towns. The 
 houses of the Trinity or Red Friars were termed Hospitals or 
 Ministries. 
 
 I have already alluded to the practice of conferring on 
 religious houses the revenues of parish churches. It com- 
 menced, indeed, previous to the reform of the twelfth century. 
 Some time before the reign of Alexander I., the churches of 
 Markinch, Scoonie, and Auchterderran had been bestowed on 
 the Culdees of Lochleven by the Celtic bishops of St Andrews ; 
 and the monks of lona had four churches in Galloway. But 
 the system was adopted to an enormous extent in the twelfth 
 century and subsequently. In the reign of William the Lion 
 thirty-three parish churches were bestowed on the abbey of 
 Arbroath. Dunfermline had as many ; Paisley, thirty ; Holy- 
 rood, twenty-seven ; Melrose, Kelso, and Lindores, nearly 
 similar numbers. The revenues of bishoprics were increased 
 from the same source. In the early part of King William's 
 reign, the Bishop of Glasgow possessed twenty-five churches, 
 and several more were afterwards acquired by it. In Fife 
 there were not more than eight rectories at the Reformation ; 
 all the other parishes were vicarages. Seven hundred Scottish 
 parishes — probably two-thirds of the whole number — were 
 vicarages — that is to say, the greater tithes of corn, &c. went 
 to the monks and bishops ; while the vicar, who performed the 
 parochial duties, got only the lesser tithes or a very small 
 money stipend. The evil effects of such a system may be easily 
 imagined. The underpaid curate was despised for his poverty, 
 which disabled him from worthily ministering to the varied 
 wants of his parishioners; while those emoluments which 
 would have provided a comfortable subsistence for a resident 
 clergyman were carried off to the distant Monastery or to the 
 Bishop's palace. 
 
 The assimilation of the Scottish to the English Church 
 embraced also its architectural styles. As our country 
 received its faith chiefly from Ireland, so its earliest monastic 
 
Mediceval Scotland. 87 
 
 structures resembled those of that country. The only remain- 
 ing monuments of the old Celtic Church, possessing any archi- 
 tectural pretensions, are the round towers of Abernethy and 
 Brechin, which are evidently of the same class as the numerous 
 round towers still existing in Ireland, and were doubtless used 
 as bell-towers and places of security. The now roofless church 
 of Egilshay in Orkney, with its round tower, is probably also 
 of Irish origin. 
 
 The Norman Conquest was followed in England by a 
 remarkable increase in the number, and an improvement in 
 the architecture of churches. In Scotland, similar effects 
 resulted from the Norman and Saxon immigration. In place 
 of the little Celtic edifices, frequently built of wood, and 
 thatched with straw or heather, there were now reared for the 
 worship of God the most magnificent structures which any age 
 has given to our country, and richly provided with all the 
 materials of an imposing ritual. The church erected at Dun- 
 fermline by St Margaret, of which the nave still exists, is the 
 earliest embodiment of the loftier aspirations now evoked, and 
 the first example of the substitution of English for Irish or 
 native influence in Scottish church architecture. This fabric 
 is of the Romanesque or Norman style brought into England 
 about the time of the Conquest — easily known by its round- 
 headed doors and windows, heavy round pillars, and, in its 
 later stages, by profuse ' zigzag ' and other ornamentation. 
 Additional examples of it may be seen in the oldest portions 
 of the cathedrals of Kirkwall and St Andrews, and of the 
 abbeys of Jedburgh and Arbroath ; in Kelso Abbey ; in the 
 rural parish churches of Dalmeny and Leuchars, and St 
 Margaret's chapel in Edinburgh Castle, which shew the semi- 
 circular apse. 
 
 Towards the end of the twelfth century the Norman style, 
 both in England and Scotland, gave place to the Early English 
 or First-Pointed, characterised by the pointed arch, long narrow 
 lancet-headed windows, clustered pillars, and less massive wall§ 
 
88 Sf Giles^ Lectures, 
 
 supported by projecting buttresses — though in our country the 
 semicircular arch, round pillar, and certain other Norman 
 features, occasionally appear both in this and subsequent 
 styles. Most of our cathedral and abbey churches — including 
 the greater portion of the stately fabrics of St Andrews, 
 Glasgow, Arbroath, and Elgin — are of the First-Pointed style, 
 which continued with us, as in England, for about a century, 
 and embraced the latter half of the reign of William the 
 Lion, and the reigns of the second and third Alexander — 
 a period which has been justly termed Scotland's Golden Age, 
 when peace and plenty, law and justice prevailed, and a great 
 advance was made in the consolidation of the Church and the 
 civilisation of the people. A striking proof of the activity in 
 church-building which prevailed in the thirteenth century is 
 found in the fact, that Bishop David Bernham of St Andrews 
 consecrated, in the space of ten years, no fewer than a hundred 
 and forty churches in his own diocese — nearly one-half of the 
 whole number it contained. Yet it is a singular circumstance 
 — explain it how we may — that by far the greater number of 
 ancient parish churches, of which fragments still exist, are of 
 the Norman style of the twelfth century. 
 
 The First-Pointed style gradually merged into the Second- 
 Pointed or Decorated, in which Gothic architecture in England 
 reached the perfection of majestic beauty. This style, dis- 
 tinguished by niullioned windows filled either with geometrical 
 or flowing tracery, enriched doorways, and elaborate mouldings, 
 prevailed in the South during the whole of the fourteenth 
 century. It had been introduced into Scotland, and was used 
 to a limited extent, before the War of Independence. During 
 that great struggle such of the clergy as were of English 
 extraction were driven from the kingdom ; dignified ecclesiastics 
 sometimes took the field at the head of their armed vassals ; 
 religious houses were ruthlessly destroyed by the invaders ; and 
 the peaceful arts were of necessity neglected. At the termina- 
 tion of the contest, the resources of the country were so much 
 
MedicBval Scotland. 89 
 
 exhausted that a long period elapsed ere it could undertake 
 great works in church-building. In this respect the fourteenth 
 century is almost a blank. In the latter half of it, however, 
 the monks of Melrose commenced the rebuilding of their 
 monastery, which had been destroyed by the English. The 
 church of Melrose Abbey is the most splendid example which 
 Scotland possesses of the Second-Pointed Style, to which also 
 the cathedral of Aberdeen is to be referred — both of them the 
 work of a lengthened period. 
 
 In England the next style was the Perpendicular or Third- 
 Pointed — having the mullions carried up in straight lines to the 
 head of the windows — which continued from the beginning of 
 the fifteenth century till the Reformation. This style can 
 scarcely be said to have taken root in Scotland, though the 
 choir of Melrose Abbey is a fine example of it. It was no 
 longer from England but from France — our steadfast ally — 
 our countrymen now took their architectural models ; and the 
 Scottish style which was contemporary with the Perpendicular 
 in England was a modification of the French Flamboyant — so 
 called from the flame-like forms of its window tracery. A 
 specimen of this style may be seen in portions of Dunkeld 
 Cathedral. 
 
 The ground-plan of the larger churches, whether cathedral 
 or conventual, usually took the form of a Latin cross, having a 
 choir as the head of the cross to the east, a nave to the west, 
 and north and south transepts. The choir was the portion first 
 built, the remaining parts being in most cases added at long 
 intervals of time. Thus it happens that the architecture of a 
 great church exhibits the changing styles of successive ages. 
 Monasteries had a Chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, and 
 other domestic buildings surrounding a quadrangular court on 
 the south side of the nave of the church ; but sometimes, for 
 local reasons, on the north side, as at Melrose and Balmerino. 
 Cathedrals served by secular canons had only the Chapter- 
 house : the canons lived in their own separate manses around 
 
go 6"/ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 the Cathedral Close or Chanonry. The uniformity both of 
 general design and minute details which exists in churches of 
 the same age, but far removed from each other, strengthens the 
 belief that those splendid memorials of the Middle Ages were 
 the work of travelling guilds of Freemasons, though the de- 
 signers of them were doubtless Churchmen, who were devoted 
 to the study of architecture and kindred arts. 
 
 Collegiate churches or Provostries had their origin in the 
 reign of David II. They were so called as consisting of a 
 College or Chapter of secular canons or prebendaries presided 
 over by a Provost or Dean, and instituted for the more orderly 
 performance of divine service, and for the singing of masses 
 for the souls of their founders and others. The prebendaries 
 were frequently the clergy of the neighbouring parishes, the 
 revenues of which, as also those of chaplainries previously 
 founded in their churches, were applied to the endowment 
 of the new institutions. The parish churches thus deprived 
 of their proper incumbents, were, like those bestowed on 
 religious houses, served by vicars. This new application 
 of parochial tithes to non-parochial purjDOses still further 
 extended the evils arising from the want of adequately pro- 
 vided and resident clergy. The earliest example of a colle- 
 giate church appears to have been that of Dunbar, instituted 
 in 1342 by the Earl of March for a dean, arch-priest, and 
 eighteen canons. There were in all thirty-three churches 
 of this class. Most of them were founded in the fifteenth 
 century, and were built in the Middle-Pointed or Flamboyant 
 style of architecture, with the French feature of a three-sided 
 eastern termination resembling an apse. Their plan is cruci- 
 form, but only in a few cases has the nave been actually 
 erected. In 1466, St Giles', the parish church of Edinburgh, 
 was erected into a Collegiate church by King James III. for 
 a Provost, sixteen prebendaries, and other officials, who were 
 endowed with the revenues of its chaplainries and altars, said 
 to have numbered about forty. Gavin Douglas, the translator 
 
MedicBval Scotland. 91 
 
 of Virgil's ^neid into Scottish verse, and afterwards Bishop 
 of Dunkeld, was for some time Provost of St Giles'. 
 
 The clergy of the Mediaeval Church may be said to have 
 been in those days the sole promoters of education. Con- 
 nected with most of the monasteries and cathedrals there were 
 schools, taught or superintended by the monks. There were 
 also many burghal schools at an early period, presided over, 
 doubtless, by churchmen. In the twelfth century, or soon after 
 it, there were schools at Abernethy, Perth, Stirling, Dundee, 
 Glasgow, Ayr, Berwick, Aberdeen, St Andrews, and doubtless 
 in other towns. About 1268, Balliol College, Oxford, was 
 erected by the Lady Devorgilla, founder of Sweet Heart 
 Abbey; and in 1326, the Bishop of Moray gave certain endow- 
 ments to the university of Paris, which formed the beginning of 
 the Scots College there. But as yet Scotland had no univer- 
 sity of its own; and Scotch students could only acquire the 
 higher learning of the time by repairing to the English or 
 Continental universities, as it appears they did in considerable 
 numbers, especially to Oxford. 
 
 The fifteenth century witnessed a wonderful revival of learn- 
 ing throughout Europe, and the Church promoted its diffusion 
 by means of universities. The universities of Europe, estab- 
 lished under Papal sanction, formed a vast brotherhood, open 
 alike to rich and poor; and the scholar who had acquired a 
 certain grade in one, was thereby made free of all. To Henry 
 Wardlaw, Bishop of St Andrews, who had himself studied at 
 Oxford, belongs the honourable distinction of having founded 
 the first university for Scotland ; and his episcopal city was 
 chosen for its seat, as being in several ways admirably adapted 
 for that purpose. The foundation charter was granted by the 
 bishop in 141 1, and this was confirmed in 1413 by Pope 
 Benedict XIII. The Papal bull was received in St Andrews 
 with the most exuberant demonstrations of joy. The ' Studium 
 Generale,' as a university was then called, was instituted on the 
 model of the university of Paris, for the study of theology, 
 
92 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 canon and civil law, medicine, 'and other lawful faculties,' 
 with the power of conferring degrees. It was to be governed 
 by a Rector, subject to an appeal to the Bishop and his suc- 
 cessors, who were to be its Chancellors. The students, as 
 at Paris, were divided into 'nations,' who, through their Pro- 
 curators, elected the Rector; and they were lodged, as at 
 present, throughout the city. The Professors were parochial 
 clergymen, exempted from residence in their parishes ; and 
 their benefices constituted their whole income, there being 
 neither fees nor endowments. Their work was at first carried 
 on in rooms in different parts of the city, there being no central 
 buildings yet provided for the University. In 1430, a Pasda- 
 gogium was erected for the Faculty of Arts. The university 
 soon acquired celebrity, and the number of its students rapidly 
 increased. It was greatly encouraged by King James I., who 
 countenanced by his presence the disputations of the students, 
 and invited to it distinguished Professors from the Continent. 
 Separate Colleges were afterwards founded — St Salvator's, in 
 1450, by Bishop Kennedy; St Leonard's, in 15 12, by Arch- 
 bishop Alexander Stewart and Prior Hepburn ; and St Mary's, 
 in 1537, on the site of the Psedagogium, by Archbishop James 
 Beaton. These Colleges being well endowed, the masters and 
 students were maintained within their walls. The result, how- 
 ever, of this more exclusive system was a falling off" in the 
 number of students. The university of Glasgow was founded in 
 1450, by Bishop TurnbuU, and that of Aberdeen in 1494, by 
 Bishop Elphinstone ; the constitution of both being in most 
 respects similar to that of the Mother university. King's 
 College, Aberdeen, was erected in 1506, and Hector Boethius, 
 the Scottish historian, was its first Principal. 
 
 The erroneous doctrines of the Mediaeval Church, and the 
 superstitious observances founded upon them, form too large a 
 subject for discussion here. I can only refer to some of those 
 peculiarities which come under our notice most frequently in 
 narratives of the period. Of this description are the honour and 
 
Medi(Eval Scotland. 93; 
 
 worship which were given to crosses and crucifixes, to pictures 
 and images of the saints ; the belief in Purgatory ; and the 
 masses and penances performed in order to obtain deliverance 
 from its fires. The intercession of the Saviour was practically- 
 obscured by a belief in that of the Blessed Virgin and the 
 saints. We meet with an affecting instance of this in the case 
 of good Bishop Brown of Dunkeld, who, on his death-bed — in 
 the year 15 15 — expressed himself as assured of the safety of his 
 soul, not for his own merits, but through the sufferings of Christ, 
 and the intercession of the Virgin, and of St Columba (patron- 
 saint of Dunkeld.) The ' day' of the patron-saint of a church 
 — the anniversary of his death — was celebrated with religious 
 rites, and frequently with a procession, in which his image was 
 borne aloft amid the reverence and genuflexions of the people. 
 The local fair was also held on this day. As regards the 
 Sabbath, when the religious services were ended, the remainder of 
 the day was usually devoted to marketing and games, in which 
 the curate sometimes joined with his parishioners. A peculiar 
 feature of those times was the religious Play or Mystery, as it 
 was termed, in which some portion of Scripture was dramatised, 
 the characters being personated by priests. These plays, in 
 which the modern drama had its origin, were first instituted by 
 the clergy for the purpose of impressing the events of sacred 
 history on the minds of a rude and ignorant people who were 
 destitute of books ; but they too often degenerated into mere 
 buff"oonery. Another practice very characteristic of the Middle 
 Ages was that of making pilgrimages to the shrines of certain 
 saints, whose intercession was believed to possess exceptional 
 efficacy, and to whose bones were ascribed miraculous powers. 
 The shrines which enjoyed the greatest celebrity were those of 
 St Ninian at Whithorn, St Adrian on the Isle of May, St 
 Palladius at Fordoun, St Duthac at Tain, St Mary at White- 
 kirk, and Our Lady of Toretto at Musselburgh. From 
 Chaucer's tales of pilgrims travelling to k Becket's shrine at 
 Canterbury, and from the numerous sums of money given by 
 
94 St ales' Lectures. 
 
 King James IV. to musicians and others while he was on 
 pilgrimage to Tain and Whithorn to expiate his sins, we may- 
 see how on those journeys amusement was combined with 
 devotion. Pilgrimages were also made by our countrymen, as 
 by others, to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem ; and though the 
 Crusades, which the Popes so zealously promoted for the rescue 
 of Palestine from the sway of the Infidels, excited less interest 
 in Scotland than elsewhere, yet contributions both of brave 
 knights and of money were oftener than once made towards 
 the Holy War. 
 
 There is now left to me only room for a few general remarks, 
 with which I shall conclude. The remodelling of the Scottish 
 Church in the twelfth century was undoubtedly for that period 
 a beneficial reform. Some portion of the ancient endowments 
 was recovered, and new benefactions were bestowed with a 
 degree of liberality which has never been equalled in our 
 country's history. The people were more systematically 
 supplied with the ordinances of religion. The clergy, both 
 regular and secular, were brought under stricter discipline. 
 Divine service was celebrated with greater solemnity ; while in 
 the doctrines then inculcated there was probably but little 
 more admixture of error than in those held by the later Celtic 
 clergy. In its subsequent development the Scottish Church 
 followed that of Western Christendom, with which it was now 
 united. The establishment of Papal supremacy over the nations 
 of Europe was gradual ; and Scotland, partly from its remote 
 situation, pardy from the character of its people, maintained its 
 independence longer than most countries. Our sovereigns 
 frequently resisted the domination of Rome ; and two of them 
 — William the Lion in 1180, and Alexander II. in 12 17 — thus 
 drew upon themselves and the nation the dreaded punishment 
 of a Papal interdict, whereby the churches were closed, and 
 the rites of religion were suspended throughout the land. If 
 Scotland at length placed itself under Papal protection, it did 
 so in order to escape subjection to English metropolitans. 
 
MedicBval Scotland. 95 
 
 The clergy, on almost all occasions, helped to preserve the 
 stability of the State by giving their support to the throne, 
 whether the contest was with Rome, with England, or with 
 overbearing Scottish barons. During many generations the 
 Medieval Church exercised an unbounded ascendency over 
 the minds and conduct of our ancestors; and its influence, 
 in those rude and turbulent times, was, on the whole, greatly 
 beneficial to the nation. With all its errors and shortcomings, 
 the Church was for a lengthened period zealous in restraining 
 the vicious, caring for the poor, civilising the people, and 
 teaching them to fear God, and to prepare for a life beyond 
 the present. Its bishops and abbots were frequently chosen to 
 fill high offices of state, for which they alone were fitted by 
 education and training. Amongst its clergy of all ranks 
 there were not a few men of saintly lives, and eminent useful- 
 ness in their day. But in course of time, the Church declined 
 in purity and zeal. Amongst the causes of this declension 
 were the great wealth of the clergy, and the law of celibacy by 
 which they were bound. The War of Independence also was 
 injurious to religion. The clergy — especially the higher orders 
 of them — while taking part in that patriotic contest, neglected 
 their proper functions ; and the relaxation of discipline which 
 ensued gained strength from the disorganised state of society 
 resulting from the same struggle. By-and-by, church benefices 
 came to be bought and sold at the Roman Court; and all 
 attempts to put a stop to this evil failed. From the reign of 
 James III. the Monks were seldom, if ever, allowed to exercise 
 their canonical right of electing their Abbots, or Cathedral 
 Chapters their Bishops ; and the sovereigns, adopting the 
 Papal practice, disposed of these offices for pecuniary or 
 other considerations to persons who, in too many cases, 
 were unworthy of them, and unable to perform the duties 
 they involved. This led the way to further abuses. Pluralities 
 abounded : livings were held in commendam ; and the spiritual 
 interests of the people were disregarded. Bishoprics and 
 
g6 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Abbacies were made use of as a provision for the natural sons 
 of the sovereign and nobles. Preaching was almost entirely 
 neglected, except by the Friars. Attempts were made to 
 remedy this evil by some good men, such as Bishop Kennedy 
 of St Andrews, who preached regularly throughout his diocese, 
 and obliged the parochial clergy to remain at their churches, 
 and attend to their duties. But such cases were rare. The 
 Monastic Orders, too, were becoming more and more de- 
 generate ; and the nobles were beginning to hanker after their 
 immense possessions. Thus the Church, which in the twelfth 
 century had been assimilated to the Roman model, had, at the 
 commencement of the sixteenth, sunk, even more than its Celtic 
 predecessor, from a state of purity and energy into one of 
 corruption and decay. My successor will tell you further of the 
 evils which now prevailed : but the darkest night is followed 
 by the dawn of a new day ; and he will also tell you of the 
 introduction of evangelical doctrines, for which some had 
 already suffered martyrdom. Though the Church still presented 
 an aspect of external unity, there were everywhere symptoms 
 of approaching change. Not only in Scotland, but throughout 
 Europe the established religion was fast losing its hold on the 
 conscience and intellect of the people. All things seemed 
 tending towards some great crisis. On the 9th of September 
 15 13, King James IV. and his bastard son, the youthful Arch- 
 bishop of St Andrews — appointed to that high office when only 
 sixteen years of age — with the flower of the Scottish nobility, 
 lay dead on the field of Flodden ; and the fires of persecution 
 were rekindled in the following reign. The year of Flodden 
 witnessed another event of wider import — the elevation of 
 Leo X. to the papal throne — which proved the commencement 
 of a new Chapter of surpassing interest and importance in the 
 history of Western Christendom. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 PRE-REFORMATION SCOTLAND, 1513 to 1559 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. Alexander F. Mitchell, D.D., 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of St Andrews. 
 
 T CANNOT, like my predecessors, complain of the length of 
 -■■ the period of which I have to treat. But events of the 
 greatest interest and importance are crowded into it. With the 
 exception of the introduction of Christianity into the world, 
 the Reformation of the sixteenth century is the most glorious 
 revolution that has occurred in the history of our race; and 
 that period of earnest contending and. heroic suffering which 
 prepared the way for it, and the story of the men who, 
 by God's grace, were enabled to bear the brunt of the battle, 
 and at last to lead their countrymen on to victory, will ever 
 have a fascination for all in whose hearts patriotism is not 
 extinct nor religion dead.^ 
 
 By the time at which Reforming influences began mani- 
 festly to shew themselves, that grand mediaeval organisation 
 
 ^ Authorities consulted : Theiner's Monumenia, Robertson's Concilia, rare 
 treatises of Alesius ; Knox, Calderwood, Spottiswood, Petrie, M'Crie, Cook, 
 Lee, Lorimer, Cunningham, D'Aubigne, &c. 
 
 G 
 
98 Sf Giles* Lectures. 
 
 which had supplanted the simpler arrangements of the old 
 Celtic Church, had exhausted its life powers, and shewn unmis- 
 takable signs of deep-seated corruption as well as hopeless 
 decay. Whatever good it may have been honoured to do in 
 previous times in preserving knowledge of God and things 
 divine in the midst of ' a darkness which might be felt,' in 
 promoting civilisation, alleviating the evils of feudalism, and 
 providing institutions which, with a purified Church and revived 
 Christian life, were to be a source of blessing to many genera- 
 tions — yet now it had grossly failed to keep alive true devotion, 
 or to give access to the sources at which the flame might be 
 rekindled ; it had failed to provide educated men for its ordi- 
 nary cures, to raise the masses from the rudeness and ignorance 
 in which they were still sunk, and even to maintain that 
 hearty sympathy with them and that kindly interest in their 
 temporal welfare which its best men in its earlier days had 
 shewn. It continued to have its services in a language which 
 had for ages been unintelligible to the bulk of the laity, and 
 was but partially intelligible to not a few of its ordinary priests. 
 It had no catechisms or hymn-books bringing down to the 
 capacities of the unlettered the truths of religion, and freely 
 circulated among them.^ It did not, when the invention of 
 printing put it in its power, make any effort to circulate among 
 them the Holy Book, that they might read therein, in their own 
 tongue, the message of God's love. No doubt it had its 
 pictures and images, its mystery plays and ceremonies, which it 
 deemed fit books for children and the unlearned. But it forgot 
 that these children were growing in capacity, even if allowed 
 to grow untrained ; that ' to credulous simplicity was succeeding 
 a spirit of eager curiosity, an impatience of mere authority, and 
 a determination to search into the foundation of things ; ' and 
 that if it was to maintain its place, it must not only keep 
 
 ^ The one catechism which at the last it ventured to issue was ' not to be 
 put into the hands of lay persons without permission of the ordinary.' 
 
Pre-Reformation Scotland. 99 
 
 abreast but ahead of advancing intelligence and morality. So 
 far from doing this, it began greatly to decline just as the laity 
 began to rise, and let slip the golden opportunity it got of 
 itself initiating needed reforms during the century which 
 followed the councils of Constance and Basel. It never 
 grappled as it ought with the problem of the education of the 
 masses; and what was done for those in more fortunate 
 circumstances was done more by the efforts of noble-minded 
 individuals than by any corporate action. It never grappled as 
 it ought with the problem of easing the burdens which had 
 long been so galling to the peasantry and poorer burgesses. 
 
 Not only had the life powers of the Mediseval Church been 
 exhausted and decay set in, but corruption — positive and 
 gross corruption — had reached an alarming height. There was 
 indolence and neglect of duty, especially the neglect of 
 preaching by the higher ecclesiastics and ordinary parish 
 priests ; the conferring of benefices on unqualified men and 
 minors; luxury, avarice, oppression, simony, pluralities, and 
 ' crass ignorance ; ' and above all, that celibate system, which 
 nothing would persuade them honestly to abandon, though it 
 proved to be a yoke they could not bear, and was producing 
 only too generally results humiliating and disastrous to them- 
 selves and to all who came under their influence.^ The harsh 
 methods to which men themselves so vulnerable resorted to 
 maintain their position, the shameless cruelties they perpetrated 
 on men of unblemished conduct and deeply religious character, 
 could not fail in the end to turn the tide against them, 
 and arouse feelings of indignation which on any favourable 
 opportunity would induce the nation to sweep them away. 
 
 The corruptions in the doctrine of the Church were hardly 
 less notable than those in the lives of its clergy. The sufficiency 
 and supremacy of the written word of God were denied, and 
 co-ordinate authority was claimed for tradition. The blessed 
 
 ^ Robertson's Concilia, pp. xc. cxl. 283, 289. 
 
loo Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Virgin and the saints departed were asserted to share the office 
 which Scripture reserves for the one Mediator between God and 
 man. Penances and external acts of work-righteousness were 
 thought to co-operate in the pardon of sin with the ' one 
 obedience ' by which ' many are made righteous.' The sacra- 
 ments were asserted to produce their effect ex opere operato, 
 not by the working of God's Spirit in them that by faith receive 
 them. The hteral transubstantiation of the bread and wine in 
 the Lord's Supper was maintained. The doctrine of a pur- 
 gatory after this hfe and the virtue of masses for the dead were 
 persistently taught. The Roman Church was held to be the 
 mother and mistress of the Churches, and its head the Vicar 
 of Christ. 
 
 Yet, even in these degenerate days, there were those among 
 the ministers of the Church who wept in secret over the abom- 
 inations that were done, and longed for the dawn of a better 
 day — who, in their parishes or cloisters or colleges, sought to 
 prepare the way for it, and succeeded in doing so with many 
 of their younger comrades, and only made up their minds 
 to abandon the old Church when all their efforts for its revival 
 proved vain. Nay, the men who initiated or carried to a suc- 
 cessful issue the struggle for a more thorough reformation — the 
 martyrs, confessors, and exiles — were almost all from the ranks 
 of the priesthood of the old Church, from the regular as well 
 as from the secular priesthood ; from the Dominican and Fran- 
 ciscan Monasteries as well as from the Augustinian Abbeys ; and 
 from none more largely than the Priory of St Andrews and 
 its daughter College of St Leonard's. At least twenty priests 
 joined the reformed congregation of St Andrews in 1559-60, 
 and among them more than one who had sat in judgment on 
 the martyrs and assisted in their condemnation. 
 
 How was the great revolution which was to bring the Church 
 back from these corruptions of life and doctrine prepared for ? 
 Scotland had had no Grosteste, no Anselm or Bradwardine 
 among its mediaeval prelates — no Wicliffe among its priests. 
 
Pre-Reformation Scotland. * loi 
 
 But the earnest contendings of the latter for the reformation of 
 the Church of England, could not fail to be heard of here. 
 His poor priests, when persecuted in the South, naturally- 
 sought shelter among the moors and mosses of the North. 
 The district of Kyle and Cunningham was 'an ancient 
 receptacle of the servants of God,' where their doctrines 
 were cherished till the dawn of the Reformation. In 1406-7, 
 one of these priests is found teaching as far North as Perth, 
 and for his teaching accused and condemned to a martyr's 
 death. A similar fate is said to have befallen another in 
 Glasgow about 1422; and in 1433 P^^^ Craw or Crawar, a 
 Bohemian, for disseminating similar opinions, was burned at 
 the market cross of St Andrews. These were not in all pro- 
 bability the only grim triumphs of Laurence of Lindores, who 
 during so many years 'gave no rest to heretics,' but they are all 
 of which records have been preserved. The facts that every 
 Master of Arts in the university of St Andrews had to take an 
 oath to defend the Church against the Lollards, and that the 
 Scottish Parliament in 1425-6 enjoined that every bishop 
 should make inquiry anent heretics and Lollards, speak 
 even more significantly of the alarm they had occasioned 
 than these sporadic martyrdoms. And in the very close of the 
 century, and in the old haunt, we find no fewer than thirty 
 processed, but through the kindness of the king more gently 
 dealt with. Three of the most resolute — namely, Campbell 
 of Cessnock, his noble wife, and a priest who officiated as 
 their chaplain and read the New Testament to them, were 
 released when at the stake. 
 
 It has not been very clearly ascertained how or when the 
 opinions and writings of Luther were first introduced into 
 Scotland. Chief among its doctors at that time was John 
 Major, who taught with distinguished success in Paris as well 
 as at home. He was a true disciple of D'Ailly and Gerson, 
 and trained many to testify against the immorality and ignor- 
 ance of the clergy. In the year 1523, Patrick Hamilton, having 
 
102 St Gilei Lectures. 
 
 studied in Paris and Louvain, and taken the degree of M.A. 
 in Paris, was admitted as a member of the faculty of Arts in 
 the University of St Andrews. At that time he was probably 
 more Erasmian than Lutheran, though of that more earnest 
 school who were ultimately to outgrow their teacher, and 
 find their congenial home in a new Church. He associated 
 chiefly with the younger canons of the Priory and the mem- 
 bers of St Leonard's College. Skilled in the musical art, he 
 set himself to improve the service of praise, and composed a 
 chant in nine parts, which was performed in the cathedral, 
 and is said to have greatly delighted the hearers. He 
 talked much of recalling philosophy to its fountains in Plato 
 and Aristotle, and abandoning the scholastic subtleties which 
 Major so greatly affected. He sought the imposition of hands, 
 that he might be authorised to preach the pure word of God 
 to the people, as well as to defend its teaching in the schools. 
 
 The years 1525 and 1526 were very unquiet years in 
 Scotland, various factions contending with varying success for 
 the possession of the person of the young king. In 1525 the 
 Parliament passed its first act against strangers introducing the 
 new opinions ; and two years after, in consequence of a letter 
 from the Pope, urging the young king to keep his realm free 
 from heresy, the act was extended to natives of the kingdom. 
 
 In 1526 the Primate, having taken keen part in the political 
 contentions of the day with the faction which lost, had to 
 escape for a time from St Andrews, and disguised as a shepherd, 
 to tend a flock of sheep for three months on the hills of Fife. 
 It was at this juncture that copies of Tyndale's translation of 
 the New Testament were brought over from the Low Countries 
 by the Scottish traders. Most of them are said to have been 
 taken to St Andrews, and put in circulation there in the 
 absence of the Archbishop. Hamilton, who had long treasured 
 the precious saying of Erasmus : ' Let us eagerly read the 
 Gospel ; yea, let us not only read, but live the Gospel,' seized 
 the golden opportunity to impress the saying on others, and 
 
Pre-Reforjuation Scotland. 103 
 
 invite longing souls to quench their thirst at those wells of 
 living water which had so marvellously been opened to them. 
 His conduct could not long escape the notice of the returned 
 Archbishop. I do not suppose that the latter was naturally- 
 cruel, nor after his recent misfortunes likely, without considera- 
 tion, to embroil himself with the Hamiltons, with whom in the 
 tortuous politics of the times he had often acted. But he had 
 those about him who were both less timid and more cruel. He 
 was himself ambitious and crafty, and about this very time 
 was exerting all his influence to obtain special favours from 
 the Pope. He knew that there was no more certain way to 
 counteract the opposition of the king and to secure what he 
 sought than by zeal against heretics. Still, he was anxious to 
 perform the ungrateful task in the way least offensive to the 
 Hamiltons. He would rather, if he could, rid the kingdom 
 of the Reformer without imbruing his hands in his blood. 
 And that result he attained by the summons he issued. 
 
 Hamilton, yielding to the counsels of friends and opponents, 
 made his escape to the continent. His original intention was to 
 visit Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg, as well as Frith, 
 Tyndale, and Lambert at Marburg. At the time he arrived on 
 the continent, however, the plague was raging at Wittenberg. 
 So he went to study at Marburg, and publicly disputed 
 those theses that most fully and systematically set forth the 
 main doctrines which he taught, and for which at last he 
 suffered. He was warmly beloved there, and urged to 
 remain. But his heart yearned to return to his native land, 
 and once more proclaim in it the truths which had now 
 become to him more precious and engrossing than before. His 
 faith had been confirmed, and his spirit quickened by living for 
 a time among earnest and decided Christians; and in the 
 autumn of 1527 he set out once more for his own country, pre- 
 pared for any fate that might await him, not counting even life 
 dear unto him if he might finish his course with joy, and bear 
 faithful witness to his Master's truth, where before he had 
 
164 'S*^ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 shrunk back from an ordeal so terrible. He appears first to 
 have resorted to his native district, and made known to rela- 
 tives, friends, and neighbours that Gospel of the grace of God 
 which gave strength and peace to his own spirit. In his dis- 
 courses and conversations, he dwelt chiefly on the great and 
 fundamental truths which had been brought into prominence 
 by the Reformers, and avoided subjects of doubtful disputation. 
 His own gentle bearing gained favour for his opinions, and it 
 won for him the heart of a young lady of noble birth, to whom 
 he united himself in marriage. 
 
 Archbishop Beaton, if not at the king's express desire, then 
 certainly, from his own wariness, did not at first venture 
 formally to renew his old summons. He invited the Reformer to 
 St Andrews to a friendly conference with himself and other 
 chiefs of the Church ' on such points as might seem to stand in 
 need of reform.* Hamilton accepted the invitation. At first 
 he was well received ; ' all displayed a conciliatory spirit ; all 
 appeared to recognise the evils in the Church; some even 
 seemed to share on some points his own sentiments.' He left 
 the conference not without hope of some other than the sad 
 issue he had anticipated. He was permitted for nearly a month 
 to move about with freedom in the city, to dispute in the schools, 
 and privately to confer with all who chose to resort to him at 
 the lodging which had been provided for him. It was evi- 
 dently the intention of those who were determinedly opposed 
 to him, that he should have ample time allowed him to 
 express his sentiments fully and unmistakably, and even should 
 be tempted by dissemblers to unbosom himself in private on 
 matters as to which he refrained from saying much in public 
 — on the many alterations required in doctrine, and in the 
 administration of the sacraments and other rites of the Church. 
 
 At length the mask was thrown aside, and he was once more 
 summoned before the ecclesiastical authorities in continuation 
 of the former process. It is said that the Archbishop still 
 desired that he should again save himself by flight ; but he and 
 
Pre-ReformatioTi Scotland. 105 
 
 his friends took the credit of the terrible deed as promptly as 
 if they had planned and intended it from the first. They also 
 assembled their armed retainers, that they might be able to hold 
 their prisoner when once seized, against all attempts to rescue 
 him. On 28th February he was seized, and on the 29th was 
 brought out for trial, in the Abbey church or cathedral. 
 
 Among the articles with which he was charged, and the truth 
 of which he maintained, the most important were, * that a man 
 is not justified by works but by faith; that faith, hope, and 
 charity are so linked together, that he who hath one of them 
 hath all, and he that lacketh one lacketh all ; and that good 
 works make not a good man, but a good man doeth good 
 works.' On being challenged by his accuser, he also affirmed 
 it was not lawful to worship images nor to pray to the saints, 
 and that it was 'lawful to all men, that have souls, to 
 read the word of God, and that they are able to understand 
 the same, and in particular the latter will and Testament of 
 Jesus Christ' These truths, which have been the source of 
 life and strength to many, were then to him the cause of con- 
 demnation and death ; and the same day the sentence was 
 passed, it was remorselessly executed. ' Nobly,' I have said else- 
 where, ' did the martyr confirm the minds of the many godly 
 youths he had gathered round him, by his resolute bearing, his 
 gentleness and patience, his steadfast adherence to the truths 
 he had taught, and his heroic endurance of the fiery ordeal 
 through which he had to pass to his rest and reward.' The 
 harrowing details of his six long hours of torture have been 
 preserved for us by Alesius, himself a sorrowing witness of the 
 fearful tragedy, * He was rather roasted than burned,' he 
 tells us. It may be, his persecutors had not deliberately 
 planned thus horribly to protract his sufferings; though such 
 cruelty was not unknown in France either then or in much 
 later time. They were as yet but novices at such revolting 
 work, and all things seemed to conspire against them. The 
 execution had been hurried on before a sufficiency of dry wood 
 
io6 Sf dies' Lectures. 
 
 had been provided for the fire. The fury of the storm, which 
 had prevented the martyr's brother from crossing the Forth 
 to rescue him, was not yet spent. With a wind from the east 
 sweeping up the street, it would be a difficult matter in such 
 a spot to kindle the pile and keep it burning, or to prevent the 
 flames, when fierce, from being so blown aside as to be almost 
 as dangerous to the surrounding crowd as to the tortured victim. 
 They did so endanger his accuser, ' set fire to his cowl, and 
 put him in such a fray, that he never came to his right mind.' 
 But through all his excruciating sufferings, the martyr held fast 
 his confidence in God and in his Saviour, and the faith of many 
 in the truths he taught was only the more confirmed by witness- 
 ing their mighty power on him. 
 
 The Archbishop thought that by this cruel deed he had 
 extinguished Lutheranism. The university of Louvain applauded 
 his deed, and so also did Major, the old Scottish Gallican, then 
 residing at Paris, and preparing for the press his commentary on 
 the four Gospels. But, according to the well-known saying, 
 ' the reek of Patrick Hamilton infected all on whom it did blow;' 
 his martyr death riveted for ever in the hearts of his friends the 
 truths he had taught in his life. This was especially the case 
 with the younger alumni in the colleges, and the less ignorant 
 and dissolute inmates of the Priory and other monastic estab- 
 hshments in the city where he suffered. As at a future period 
 they made sure of detecting a stern Covenanter, if he refused 
 to admit that the killing of Archbishop Sharp was to be 
 regarded as murder, so they thought it sufficient mark of an 
 incipient Lutheran if they did not get him to acknowledge that 
 Patrick Hamilton deserved his fate. One on this sole charge, 
 and that he had a copy of the English New Testament, was 
 subjected to long imprisonment and a violent death ; another, 
 for simply preaching, as Major would, of the corruptions of 
 the clergy, had to escape for his life; and a third, whose 
 history, after being long forgotten, has been again brought to 
 light in our own day, was for the same offences subjected 
 
Pre-Refonnation Scotland. 107 
 
 to many cruelties, and at last forced to flee from his native 
 land, and plead with it by his writings. 
 
 The original name of this confessor was Alexander Alane ; 
 but he afterwards obtained from Melanchthon the name of 
 Alesius or the Wanderer, and by that he has been commonly 
 known ever since. Born in Edinburgh on the 23d April 1500, 
 of honest parents, he received the first rudiments of education in 
 his native city. He was sent early to the university, and entered 
 St Leonard's College when opened in 15 12. In due course 
 he took his degree, and probably after acting for a few years as 
 one of the regents of the college, he was drafted into the Priory 
 as one of its canons. When Major came to St Andrews, he 
 studied theology under him, and made great progress in acquaint- 
 ance with the schoolmen and fathers of the Christian Churcli. 
 He was, like most of the young scholastics of the time, fond of 
 disputation, and probably imbibed from his able teacher that 
 combative attitude towards the new opinions which at this 
 period of his life he shewed. He thought it would be an easy 
 task to convince Patrick Hamilton of his errors, and had various 
 discussions with him. ' Hamilton, who had before him nothing 
 but the Gospels, replied to all the reasonings of his opponent 
 with the clear, living, far-reaching words of Scripture. Alesius 
 was embarrassed, and at length silenced; not only was his under- 
 standing convinced, but his conscience was won, and the breath 
 of a new life penetrated his soul,' He continued to visit the 
 Reformer while he lived, and to cherish his memory when cut 
 off. When his opinions and martyrdom were the subject of 
 conversation among the canons, several of the younger of 
 whom loved to speak of him, Alesius refused to condemn him. 
 
 His silence or reserve in regard to the martyr brought him 
 under the suspicion of his more bigoted associates, and gave 
 special offence to his superior, Prior Patrick Hepburn, a violent, 
 coarse, immoral young noble, emulous of the debaucheries 
 and vices as well as of the hauteur and polish of the young 
 French ecclesiastics among whom his youth had been passed, 
 
io8 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 and, like them and young Beaton, a cruel persecutor of the 
 Reformers. Knox has drawn a graphic if severe account of the 
 revelries of this young Prior and his gay associates, more in 
 keeping with what we should have expected from the sons of 
 Tarquin in heathen Rome, than from the elite of the young 
 ecclesiastics in a Christian primatial city, and under the eye of 
 an aged Archbishop. The representation of Alesius on the 
 same subject is only the more credible because the more 
 restrained, and combines with the other in shewing to what a 
 low ebb morality had sunk among the aristocratic ecclesiastics 
 of the old Church ere it was swept away. 
 
 The more Christian lives of the younger canons could not 
 but be felt to be a standing rebuke by their superior, and doubt- 
 less were one main cause why he bore them such a deep grudge, 
 and gave way to such fierce outbursts of passion in his inter- 
 course with them. He denounced them, and especially Alesius, 
 to the Archbishop ; and soon after got him appointed to 
 preach the sermon at the opening of a Synod of bishops and 
 priests which was held in St Andrews, probably in the spring of 
 the year 1529. Alesius says he inveighed earnestly against 
 immoral priests; but he adds that, as he said nothing in a 
 disloyal spirit, and attacked no one by name, the sermon gave 
 no offence to good men. But his irate superior imagined that 
 the sermon was specially intended to hold him up to ridicule 
 before the assembled prelates and clergy ; and having already 
 defied the Archbishop, he was not likely patiently to brook such 
 conduct on the part of one of his subordinates. An oppor- 
 tunity soon occurred to him of repaying with interest the insult 
 which he imagined had been done to him. The canons had 
 determined to lodge with the king a complaint of the cruelty of 
 their Prior. When this came to Hepburn's ears, he rushed 
 with a band of armed attendants into the place where they 
 were met, ordered Alesius to be seized, and himself drew his 
 sword, and would have run it through him had not two of the 
 canons dragged him back and pushed aside his sword. 
 
Pre-Reformation Scotland. 109 
 
 The affrighted canon was hurried off to prison, whither his 
 companions speedily followed ; but on a remonstrance by certain 
 noble friends, the king gave orders that they should be released. 
 These orders were soon carried out with respect to all save 
 Alesius, So far from being set free, he was thrust into a more 
 filthy dungeon, called in one of his little treatises tderrimo spccu 
 siibtus ten-am inter bufones et serpentes, and in another a lairbia 
 or sink, to which nothing corresponding has yet been found in 
 St Andrews, save the lately discovered roughly hewn cavern 
 stretching to the northwards of Castle Street, going down by its 
 southern entrance into the solid rock by thirty somewhat 
 irregular steps, and terminating in a small chamber of rounded 
 or oval form. This chamber had in its roof a circular opening 
 eight or ten inches in diameter, which has now been enlarged, 
 and to which a low rock-hewn passage from the castle leads 
 down. No cry from that chamber deep in the rock could reach 
 the upper air, and he might well abandon hope who entered 
 it. In this or some similar place yet undiscovered, the poor 
 canon was confined for eighteen or twenty days; and when 
 released was enjoined to tell nothing about the treatment to 
 which he had been subjected. Alesius, however, would not 
 conceal the truth, and for that he was again seized and kept in 
 confinement for nearly a year. This, probably, was within 
 the priory itself, and when the Prior was absent, the canons 
 occasionally had the prisoner brought out, and even allowed 
 him to take a leading part in their service at the altar. On 
 one occasion, the Prior came back when he was not expected, 
 and seeing what went on in his absence, ordered his victim 
 into ward again, threatening on the morrow to have him off to 
 the place where his life had been so nearly sacrificed before. 
 
 The canons, now satisfied that horrible torments and certain 
 death awaited him if he did not at once escape, gathered 
 around him as soon as their superior had left for the night, 
 and urged him to seek safety in flight. With reluctance he 
 yielded to their wishes. Then followed a parting scene only 
 
no Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 less affecting than that of St Paul from the disciples on the 
 sea-shore of Phenicia, and shewing that even then goodness and 
 charity were still strong in the hearts of not a few left under 
 the rule of Hepburn. Only, the Apostle, though in a heathen 
 land, could in open day kneel down on the sea-shore and 
 commend his friends in prayer to God, and they could openly 
 take leave of him at his ship ; while these, though living in a 
 Christian land, had secretly to bring out their friend under 
 cover of the night, and with a few words of comfort, send him 
 forth alone. ' Secretly,' he says, ' they bring me forth and 
 supply me with provisions for the journey. So when with 
 tears we had bidden each other farewell, and they had some- 
 what alleviated my sorrow by sweet mention of the illustrious 
 and holy men who, giving place to tyranny, had abandoned 
 their native country, I set out on my way.' 
 
 In solitude and sadness he plodded on his way, under cover 
 of thick darkness, to that broad Firth which on this same Sunday 
 last year was the scene of such sad disaster to trustful travellers, 
 if haply he might find on its shore some tiny boat, or on its 
 bosom some friendly craft, to convey him without loss of time 
 beyond the reach of his implacable persecutor. In both respects 
 he was successful, and with earliest morn got safe on ship-board. 
 Qiiidam homo germa)ius, which some translate ' a certain man, 
 a German,' others render 'a certain man, a kinsman,' kindly 
 received him and affectionately nursed him in his sickness 
 during the tedious and stormy voyage, on which he started 
 before the horsemen sent to recapture him arrived. 
 
 Thus Alane left his native land and the friends to whom he was 
 so deeply attached. * Could any one have whispered in the ear 
 of the disconsolate fugitive that he was on the road to far more 
 extensive usefulness' and happiness than had yet been his lot; 
 that under his new name and in his new home he would gain 
 many true friends, and be honoured to do much good work for 
 Christ ; that he would not only be the first by his writings to 
 plead for the free circulation of the vernacular Scriptures in 
 
Pre-Reformation Scotland. 
 
 Scotland, and one of the first to aid Cranmer in England in 
 asserting the authority of the word of God, and Hermann von 
 Wied in his noble effort to introduce the Reformation at 
 Cologne ; but that he would be also privileged to be the special 
 friend of Luther and Melanchthon, to command at the same 
 time the respect of Calvin and Beza, to attend many of the 
 great conferences of the leaders of the Reformation on the 
 continent; to labour as a professor of theology, first in the 
 university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and then in that of Leipsic; 
 to write commentaries on the Psalms, the Gospel of St John, 
 the Epistle to the Romans, and the Pastoral Epistles, and live 
 and die honoured and beloved in the land of his exile — ' how 
 incredible would it all have seemed to him.' Yet it was thus 
 God meant it, and thus he brought it to pass. And if there 
 was one among the Scottish confessors of that age who was 
 less embittered than another towards his persecutors in the old 
 Church, more willing to yield to them in things of minor import- 
 ance, if only he could hope to secure their favourable regard for 
 truths of highest moment and immediate concern to the welfare 
 of his native land, it was this cruelly harassed fugitive. He 
 was unquestionably the most learned, as well as the most con- 
 ciliatory of the Scottish reformed theologians of the sixteenth 
 century. It was to his persistent advocacy, perhaps, more than 
 to any other human instrumentality, that his countrymen owe 
 the concession of the precious privilege of reading the Scrip- 
 tures in their mother-tongue. Had he done nothing more than 
 successfully pleaded for that concession, he would have given 
 them abundant reason to remember him still. But in addition, 
 he pled with them, before the author of the Complay?it of 
 Scotlmid did so, to lay aside their animosities, to have more 
 confidence in each other, and less dependence either on 
 England or France, if they would secure a happy issue from 
 their troubles, civil or ecclesiastical. No monument has yet 
 been reared to his memory, even in this city of statues — the 
 city of his birth, which he has described so well — but I hope 
 
112 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 the day may yet come when Anderson's suggestion may be 
 acted on, and a statue of the exile erected, bearing on its 
 pedestal that scene from The Cottar's Saturday Night, still so 
 dear to the hearts of his countrymen. 
 
 From the time that Alesius fled, down to the death of 
 James V., there was almost continuous inquisition for those who 
 were suspected of having heretical books, including the New 
 Testament in the vernacular, or who otherwise shewed a leaning 
 towards the new opinions. In 1532, as is generally supposed, 
 Henry Forrest, who like Hamilton was a native of the county of 
 Linlithgow, and had associated with the martyr in St Andrews, 
 was the first to share his fiery baptism. He was burned at 
 the North Kirk Stile there, that the heretics of Angus might see 
 the fire and take warning from it. In the same year, 'there 
 was a great abjuration of the favourers of Martin Luther in the 
 Abbey of Holyrood.' In 1534 a second great assize against 
 heretics was held in the same place. The king, as the great 
 Justiciar, was present in his scarlet robe, and took part in the 
 proceedings. About sixteen are said to have been convicted, 
 and had their goods forfeited. James Hamilton, the brother of 
 the martyr, had been ordered by the king to flee, as he could 
 not otherwise be saved. His sister was persuaded to submit 
 to the Church. Norman Gourlay, a priest who had been abroad 
 and had imbibed the new opinions, and David Stratoun, the 
 brother of the laird of Laureston, were burned at the Rood 
 of Greenside. In the same year, Willock, M'Alpin, and 
 M'Dowall had to escape into England. In 1536, when the king 
 and the Cardinal were abroad, there was comparative peace. 
 In 1537 several were convicted in Ayr and had their goods 
 forfeited, among whom was Walter Steward, son of Lord 
 Ochiltree. In 1538-9 many were accused and convicted in 
 various burghs, and many sought safety in flight. Among these 
 last were Gavin Logie, who in St Leonard's College had done 
 good to many under him ; John Fife, who became Professor of 
 Divinity in the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder ; George 
 
Pre-Reformation Scotland. \\% 
 
 Buchanan, who at the king's command had written the 
 Franciscanus ; also George Wishart, who had taught the 
 Greek New Testament ; John and James Wedderburn of 
 Dundee; and Thomas Cocklaw, John and Robert Richardson, 
 and Robert Logie, canons of the Augustinian Abbey of 
 Cambuskenneth. Cocklaw, Knox tells us, for marrying a wife, 
 had been shut up within stone walls, but his brother came 
 with crowbars and released him. ' Large numbers of the wealthy 
 burgesses were stripped of their possessions, even after they 
 had abjured, among whom the burgesses of Dundee were 
 conspicuous. Nor was the good town of Stirling far behind 
 Dundee in the race of Christian glory. She had less wealth to 
 resign, but she brought to the altar a larger offering of saintly 
 blood. On the ist of March 1539, no fewer than four of her 
 citizens were burned at one pile on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh. 
 At the same stake with them perished one of the most sainted 
 and interesting of Scotland's martyrs — Thomas Forret, Dean 
 of the Augustinian Abbey of Inchcolm, and Vicar of Dollar.' 
 He taught his parishioners the Ten Commandments, penned a 
 little catechism for their instmction, preached every Sunday, 
 and shewed them that pardon of sin could only be obtained 
 through the blood of Christ. When he pulled from his sleeve 
 his New Testament, his accuser exclaimed : ' This is the book 
 that makes all the din and pley in our Kirk.' The same year 
 two were condemned and burned at Glasgow.^ 
 
 During all these anxious years, the measures against the 
 Reformers had been really directed by the man who comes 
 more into public view towards their close. This was David 
 Beaton, the nephew of the Primate, and by this time Abbot 
 of Arbroath and Bishop of Mirepoix in France, coadjutor to his 
 uncle, and Cardinal of St Stephen on the Ccelian Mount. I 
 can but abridge here what I have elsewhere said of him. 
 
 ^ Then also Mr John Brown, patron of the Chaplainry of St Francis' 
 Altar, within the College Kirk of St Giles, was convicted of heresy, and his 
 goods and patronage assigned to Mr James Foulis, of Colinton. 
 
 H 
 
114 Sf dies' Lectures. 
 
 He was a man not only of large intelligence, consummate 
 ability, unbounded ambition, and indomitable energy ; but also 
 of polished manners and considerable scholarly attainments. 
 He did not, it is true, belong to the school of Pole and Con- 
 tarini, who would have made concessions to the Reformers in 
 respect of doctrine ; nor to that of the disciples of D'Ailly and 
 Gerson, who were pressing for a reformation in respect of 
 morals. His associations and sympathies were rather with the 
 Italian or French Humanist school, both in its virtues and 
 vices. He was versed in the study of canon and civil law, as 
 well as of the classics. He was a great stickler for the liberties 
 of Holy Church, and for years refused to pay the tax imposed 
 on him for the support of the College of Justice. It was no 
 doubt by his advice that heretical processes from the first were 
 carried on under the canon law, rather than under the acts of the 
 Scotch Parliament. His time, from 15 14 to 1524, was passed 
 abroad — the later years in the diplomatic service of his country; 
 and he had no sooner returned home than the same measures 
 of restraint began to be adopted here, which had already been 
 put in practice in France. Even some of the hardest sayings 
 of the king were but the echo of those of the king of France. 
 Like many of the high dignitaries of the Scottish Church of 
 that time, he was of incontinent habits, but he was never, so far 
 as I know, guilty of such shameless excesses as were the boast 
 of his comrade Hepburn ; nor did he ever allow himself to sink 
 into the same indolent and unredeemed self-indulgence. He 
 was above all a ' hierarchical fanatic,' devoted to the cause of 
 absolutism, who would shrink from no measures, however cruel, 
 to preserve intact the privileges of his order, and to stamp out 
 more earnest and generous thought, whether having in view the 
 reformation of the old Church, or the building up of another 
 and better on her ruins. If we may not say that he had sold 
 himself to France, which had pensioned him with a rich 
 bishopric, and helped him to his honours, we must say he had 
 lived so long in it, and had got so enamoured of it, that he was 
 
Pre-Reformation Scotland. 115 
 
 three parts French and ' all Popish.' He had mingled not only 
 with its scholars, but with its nobles ; and he loved their society 
 — loved and resolved to imitate their ways, even down to their 
 way of treating heretics. He made no earnest effort to reform 
 the old Church ; and it was not till towards the close of his life 
 that he began to apply for the building of St Mary's College, 
 the money which his uncle had set apart for it. 
 
 For the suppression of evangelical Christianity, the Cardinal 
 needed the support of his sovereign, and he spared no efforts to 
 gain him over to his side, and to detach him from his nobility 
 and his uncle. There was much in the king's character to 
 encourage such efforts. With good natural abilities, and a 
 frank and amiable disposition, he had been encouraged by his 
 guardians in sensual pleasures, and never to the last freed him- 
 self from his evil habits. * Dissolute as a man, prodigal as a 
 king, and superstitious as a Catholic, he could not but easily 
 fall under the sway of superior minds, who promised to free him 
 from the worries of business, to regard his failings with indul- 
 gence, and to provide him with money.' These things Beaton 
 and his party endeavoured to do; and lest he should be tempted 
 to follow the example of his uncle, and appropriate the pro- 
 perty of the monasteries and other religious institutions, or set 
 the Church lands to feu, as he once threatened, they repeatedly 
 presented to him lists of those who were suspected of 
 heresy, urging that they should be prosecuted without delay, 
 and their goods, on conviction, be escheated to the crown. 
 They made large contributions from their own revenues to aid 
 him in the wars with England, which obedience to their counsels 
 had brought on him. They procured dispensations from the 
 papal court to enable his sons, though illegitimate and infants, 
 to hold any benefices inferior to bishoprics, and on reaching 
 a certain age, to hold even the highest offices in the Church. 
 
 But though James shewed little indulgence to the Reformers, 
 and little favour for their doctrine, he seems to the last to have 
 had no great liking for the priests of the old faith. No bribery, 
 
ii6 St Giles' Lectures. 
 
 no flattery, no solicitations, could reconcile him permanently to 
 those who for their selfish ends dragged him into courses 
 from which his own better impulses at times made him revolt. 
 * He incited Buchanan to lash the mendicant friars in the 
 vigorous verse of the Franciscanus. He encouraged by his 
 presence the public performance of a play which, by its ex- 
 posure of the vices of the clergy, contributed ' greatly to weaken 
 their influence. ' He enforced the object of that remarkable 
 drama by exhorting the bishops to amend their lives under a 
 threat that, if they neglected his warning, he would deal with 
 them after the fashion of his uncle in England. He repeated 
 the exhortation in his last Parliament, declaring that the negli- 
 gence, the ignorance, the scandalous and disorderly lives of the 
 clergy, were the cause why the Church and Churchmen were 
 scorned and despised.' 
 
 So, notwithstanding all measures of repression, the desire for 
 reformation grew and spread throughout the nation, especially 
 among the smaller landed proprietors in Angus and Mearns, in 
 Perth and Fife, in Kyle and Cunningham, as also among the 
 more intelligent burgesses in the cities and burghs, and above 
 all, among the elite of the younger inmates of the monasteries 
 and of the alumni of the universities. When the poor monarch, 
 almost as much sinned against as sinning, at last died of a 
 broken heart, and the Earl of Arran looked about for trusty 
 supporters to defend his claims to the regency, he deemed it 
 politic to shew not a little countenance to the friends of the 
 Reformation and of the English alliance. We should hardly 
 be warranted to assert that even then he meant to rank himself 
 among Protestants. But he chose as his chaplains preachers who 
 inclined to their opinions, he encouraged their chief men to 
 frequent his court, and he ventured to lay hands on the haughty 
 and unscrupulous Cardinal. He consented to pass through 
 Parliament an act expressly permitting the people to have and 
 to read the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in the 
 vulgar tongue, and despatched messengers to all the chief 
 
Pre-Reformation Scotland. 117 
 
 towns to make public proclamation of the act. The little 
 treatises of Alesius had done their work, and he himself thought 
 of returning and completing what he had so well begun. The 
 friends of the Reformation imagined that the hour of their 
 triumph was at hand. They did not know on what a treacherous 
 prop they were leaning,'nor that the Regent, within six weeks 
 after the last of the messengers was despatched with the above- 
 named proclamation, secretly sent off others to inform the 
 Holy Father of his accession to the regency, to put himself and 
 the kingdom under his protection, and to ask permission to 
 have under his control the income of the benefices of the 
 king's sons till they should come of age. The love of money 
 was with him the root of this evil, as the fear of man was of 
 others ; and so he went from bad to worse, till in the dim light 
 of the Franciscan chapel at Stirling, ' that weak man, to whom 
 people had been looking for the triumph of the Reformation 
 in Scotland, fondly fancying that he was performing a secret 
 action, knelt down before the altar, humbly confessed his errors, 
 trampled under foot the oaths which he had taken to his own 
 country and to England, renounced the evangelical confession 
 of Jesus Christ, submitted to the Pope, and received absolution 
 from the Cardinal.' 
 
 Even in June he had entered in the books of the Privy 
 Council an ordinance against Sacramentaries holding opinions 
 of the effect and essence thereof tending to the enervation of 
 the faith catholic, in which they were threatened with loss of 
 life, lands, and goods. He had not dared to proclaim this 
 openly, though perhaps his friend Henry VIH. would not have 
 blamed him greatly for doing so. But no sooner was he under 
 the power of the Cardinal, than he shewed in open Parliament 
 * how there is great murmur that heretics more and more rise 
 and spread within this realm, sowing damnable opinions con- 
 trary to the faith and laws of Holy Kirk, and to the acts and 
 constitutions of the realm ; ' and exhorted ' all prelates and 
 ordinaries ... to make inquisition after all such manner of 
 
1 1 8 iSi" Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 persons, and proceed against them according to the laws of 
 Holy Kirk ; ' promising to be ready himself at all times to do 
 what belonged to his office. This promise he was soon called to 
 fulfil. On the 20th January 1544, he set out in company of the 
 Cardinal, the Lord Justice and his deputy, with a band of armed 
 men and artillery, to Perth, where a great assize was held. 
 Several were convicted of heresy, and their goods forfeited. 
 Several were condemned to die. The governor was inclined 
 to spare their lives, but the Cardinal and the nobles threatened 
 to leave him if he did this. So, on 25th January 1544, Robert 
 Lamb, James Hunter, William Anderson, and James Ronaldson 
 were hanged. The wife of the last-named was refused the 
 consolation of being suspended from the same beam with her 
 husband, and put to death by drowning, after she had consigned 
 to the care of a neighbour the infant she carried in her arms. 
 Dundee was next visited, but the suspected citizens had taken 
 the alarm and fled, leaving only their books to be burned. 
 
 It was about this time that a new evangelist arrived in the 
 country, singularly fitted to impress on the hearts of men the 
 lessons of the holy book to which they had now free access in 
 their native tongue. This was George Wishart, a younger 
 brother of the laird of Pittarrow in the Mearns. He appears 
 to have been born about 15 12, and to have received his 
 university training in Aberdeen, or abroad. He acquired 
 a knowledge of Greek — at that time a very rare accomplish- 
 ment in Scotland — from a Frenchman brought by Erskine of 
 Dun to Montrose. While acting as schoolmaster there, Wishart 
 had read the Greek New Testament with some of his 
 pupils, and in consequence had been cited by the Bishop of 
 Brechin to answer to a charge of suspected heresy. Like 
 many others at that time, he thought it best not to appear, 
 and escaped to England. He was thereupon excommunicated 
 and outlawed. He is found at Bristol in 1539, involved in 
 fresh troubles. After that he visited several of the Conti- 
 nental Reformed Churches, especially those of German Switzer- 
 
Pre-Reformation Scotland. 119 
 
 land, and brought home and translated into English the First 
 Helvetic Confession. He is supposed to have returned to 
 England before the close of 1541, and shortly after his return, 
 to have entered into residence in Benet College, Cambridge. 
 To one of his pupils there we are indebted for our fullest account 
 of his appearance and habits; and in one of its stained-glass 
 windows, place has been found for a worthy memorial of him. 
 He ' was a man of tall stature . . . black haired, long bearded, 
 comely of personage, well spoken after his country of Scotland, 
 courteous, lowly, lovely, glad to teach, desirous to learn, and 
 was well travelled. . . . His charity was unbounded; he studied 
 all means of doing good to all, hurt to none.' He was not only 
 of rare graces, but 'learned in all honest human science.' 
 
 Such was the evangelist who — in 1543 according to some, in 
 1544 according to others — returned to his native land, and for 
 two years testified of the Gospel of the grace of God throughout 
 Angus and Meams, Ayrshire and the Lothians, but whose 
 favourite fields of labour were to be the towns of Montrose and 
 Dundee. A portrait of him has been preserved and engraved, 
 and the expression of the face harmonises well with what 
 his pupil has said of him. It is supposed that for a short time 
 after his return he lived quietly at Pittarrow, and being an 
 accomplished artist, occupied himself in adorning the ancestral 
 mansion with several significant paintings, which, after being 
 long covered over by the wainscot, were again brought to light 
 in the present century, but unfortunately were destroyed before 
 their value was perceived. The most remarkable of them 
 was a painting of the city of Rome, and a grand procession 
 going to St Peter's. Below the picture were written the 
 following enigmatical lines on the Pope : 
 
 Laus tua non tua fraus, virtus non gloria rerum 
 Scandere te fecit hoc decus eximium ; 
 Pauperibus dat sua gratis nee munera curat 
 Curia Papalis, quod more percipimus. 
 Hsec cannina potius legenda, cancros imitandg, 
 
120 iSy Giles^ Lechires, 
 
 It was about the same time that he formed that kirk or 
 congregation which at a later period we shall find he came to 
 salute, and began his labours as a preacher by expounding the 
 Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles' 
 Creed. This was in the town of Montrose, the scene of his 
 early scholastic labours. At that time it was frequented by 
 some of the nobles and many of the landed gentry around who 
 were favourable to the Reformation and the English alliance ; 
 and their hearts could not fail to be cheered and their courage 
 raised by the exhortations of the evangelist. Dundee, however, 
 was the chief and favourite scene of his ministrations, and it 
 was from the great success which attended these that it gained 
 the name of the Scottish Geneva. It was even more decidedly 
 attached to the new opinions and to the English alliance than 
 Montrose; and a Reformation, as it was called, including the 
 sacking of the monasteries in the town and neighbourhood, 
 took place shortly before or soon after his arrival. He 
 preached for a time in Dundee with great acceptance, expound- 
 ing systematically the Epistle to the Romans, the full signifi- 
 cance of which the recently published commentary of Calvin had 
 deeply impressed on the minds of his co-religionists in various 
 lands. At length he was charged by one of the magistrates in 
 the queen's name and the governor's to desist from preaching, 
 depart from the town, and trouble it no more. This was inti- 
 mated to him when he was in the pulpit surrounded by a great 
 congregation. Thereupon he called God to witness that he 
 intended not their trouble but their comfort, and felt sure that 
 to reject the word of God and drive away his messenger was not 
 the way to save themselves from trouble.' He then left the 
 town, and ' with all possible expedition passed to the west 
 land.' There he pursued his labours in the same kindly spirit, 
 refusing to allow his followers to dispute possession of the 
 churches by force, and choosing rather to preach in the 
 open air wherever he found a convenient place and audience 
 fit, than go where he was not welcome. 
 
Pre-Reformation Scdtland. 
 
 Soon after he left Dundee, the plague extended its ravages 
 to that place, Wishart, on hearing this, returned to the afflicted 
 town, and its inhabitants received him with joy. He announced 
 without delay that he would preach to them ; but it was impos- 
 sible he could do so in a church. Numbers were sick of the 
 plague ; others in attendance on them were regarded as infected, 
 and must not be brought into contact with those who were 
 free from infection. The sick were lodged in booths and the 
 'lazar-houses' near St Roque's Chapel, outside the East or Cow- 
 gate Port of the town. Wishart chose as his pulpit the top of 
 this port, which, in memory of the martyr-preacher, has been 
 carefully preserved, though, like Temple Bar — so long tolerated 
 in London — it is now in the heart of the town, and an obstruc- 
 tion to its traffic. The sick and suspected were assembled 
 outside the port, and the healthy inside. The preacher took 
 for the text of his first sermon the words of Psalm cvii. 20 : 
 ' He sent His word and healed them ; ' and starting on the 
 key-note that it was neither herb nor plaster, but God's 
 word which healeth all, as Knox tells us, he so raised up 
 the hearts of all who heard him, that they regarded not 
 death, but judged those more happy that should depart than 
 those that should remain behind ; considering that they knew 
 not that they should have such a comforter with them at all 
 times.' John Wedderburn, as well as others who had fled from 
 the town in the persecution of 1539, had before this time 
 returned, and no doubt they were co-operating with Wishart in 
 his work. Then in all probability came out in rudimentary 
 form the 'Psalms of Dundee,' and that beautiful funeral 
 hymn which passed from the Bohemians to the Germans, 
 and from the Germans to the Scotch, and which in the Scottish 
 version contains certain additional stanzas, having unmistak- 
 able reference to the circumstances in which it originated in a 
 plague-stricken town, which had just before been occupied by 
 the soldiers of the Cardinal and the Regent, and might well 
 dread a similar visitation : 
 
122 S^ Giles" Lectures, 
 
 Though pest or sword wald us prevene, 
 Before our hour to slay us dene, 
 They cannot pkick one little hair 
 Furth from our head, or do us dare. 
 
 Wishart concerned himself not only about the souls, but also 
 about the bodies of his hearers in that sad time, fearlessly 
 exposing himself to the risk of infection, that he might minister 
 to the diseased and the dying, and taking care that the public 
 funds for the relief of the destitute should be properly admin- 
 istered. He forgot himself only too much, and the terrible 
 risks to which, as an excommunicated and outlawed man, he 
 was exposed in so near proximity to the Cardinal. 
 
 One day as the people were departing from the sermon, 
 Knox tells us that a priest, bribed by the Cardinal, stood waiting 
 at the foot of the steps by which the preacher was descending 
 from the top of the port, with his gown loose, and his dagger 
 drawn in his hand under his gown. Wishart, most sharp of eye 
 and swift of judgment, at once noticed him, and as he came 
 near, seized the hand in which he held the dagger and took it 
 from him. Immediately the rumour spread that a priest had 
 attempted to assassinate their favourite preacher, the sick out- 
 side burst open the gate, crying : ' Deliver the traitor to us, or else 
 we will take him by force.' But the preacher put his arms 
 around his would-be assassin, exclaiming : ' Whosoever troubles 
 him shall trouble me, for he has hurt me in nothing, but has let 
 us understand what we may fear in time to come ; ' ' and so he 
 saved the life of him that sought his.' 
 
 Like Dr Lorimer, I cannot persuade myself that the man who 
 spoke and acted thus is the same as ' a Scottish man called 
 Wishart,' who is mentioned in a letter of the Earl of Hertford, 
 in the spring of the year 1544, as privy to a conspiracy to 
 assassinate Cardinal Beaton, and as employed to carry letters 
 between the conspirators and the English court. There were 
 other Wisharts in Scotland, and even in Dundee, at that time, 
 also friends of the English alliance. It is unjust, therefore, tg 
 
Pre-Reformation Scotland. 123 
 
 charge the Reformer with any participation in such a dastardly 
 plot, without a particle of positive evidence to support the 
 charge. As an outlawed man, he came down to Scotland 
 under protection, and seems never to have travelled in it save 
 under protection ; and so he was one of the last men likely 
 to be chosen for a secret mission. If anything more than 
 the able essay of the late Professor Weir, in the North British 
 Review for 1868, were needed to prove that 'the pure lustre 
 of the martyr's fame is still unsullied,' it seems to me to be 
 furnished by himself in his affecting address at the stake : 
 'I beseech the Father of heaven to forgive them that have 
 of any ignorance, or else of any evil mind, forged any lies upon 
 me. I forgive them with all my heart' 
 
 From this time forth, the Reformer had a clearer view of the 
 perils which beset him, and a mournful conviction of the issue 
 which awaited him if he would not flee or flinch. By his suc- 
 cess in Dundee, the rage of his adversaries was lashed into fury, 
 which appalled his friends and partisans in various districts ; but 
 none of these things moved him, that he might finish his course 
 with joy, and make full proof of his ministry. As soon as the 
 plague abated, heedless of the warnings of his northern friends 
 as to the risk he ran in leaving, he administered the com- 
 munion in both kinds at Dun, and took his last farewell of the 
 churches of Montrose and Dundee. At all hazards, he was 
 determined to fulfil his engagement to meet with his western 
 friends in Edinburgh, prosecute his work there under their pro- 
 tection, and engage in public disputation with certain of the 
 popish clergy, who about that time were to meet in synod in 
 the capital. Disappointed of their presence and protection, he 
 laboured for a brief season in Leith, Inveresk, and East Lothian 
 with varying success. At last, forsaken by many of those who 
 should have stood by him, he was seized at Ormiston under 
 cover of night, and promise of safe keeping by the Earl of 
 Bothwell, Sheriff-Principal of the county. The earl pledged 
 his honour not to give him up to his enemies, but was per- 
 
124 "S"/ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 suaded to deliver him to the governor, as the governor was 
 to hand him over to the Cardinal, though finally protesting 
 against his being tried or condemned in his own absence. A 
 full account of these transactions has been given by Knox, 
 who rendered his first service to the cause of the Reforma- 
 tion by attending on him, bearing a two-handed sword, and 
 was dismissed on the night of his betrayal with the signifi- 
 cant words : ' One is sufficient for a sacrifice.' 
 
 I cannot enlarge on these things, nor on the sad scenes 
 which took place at St Andrews on the 2Sth February and ist 
 March 1546, when the Cardinal, regardless of the remon- 
 strances of the Regent, and the murmurs of the people, tried 
 and condemned him; nor on his last touching interviews 
 with the Sub-Prior of the Monastery and the Captain of the 
 Castle. Throughout all these trying scenes he comported him- 
 self as nobly as Hamilton had done, and not less plentifully 
 did his blood prove the seed of the Church, so that, as he said, 
 not many should sufi'er after him. Within three months his 
 persecutor was surprised in his stronghold, and ' cut off by a fate 
 as tragical and ignominious as any that has ever been recorded 
 in the long catalogue of human crimes.' No doubt this cruel 
 martyrdom hastened the removal of the tyrant, who set himself 
 above all restraint of law, and breathed forth threatenings 
 against the saints of God ; though that removal had not been 
 plotted by Wishart, nor would have been approved by him. 
 The words attributed to him at the stake by Buchanan are 
 not generally regarded as authentic. 
 
 The remembrance of Wishart was fondly cherished, especi- 
 ally in that district where he chiefly laboured, and where he 
 wrought a work not less memorable than that M'Cheyne 
 and Burns were honoured to do in our own day. His influence 
 was but deepened by his cruel fate, and 'he lived again,' as 
 Dr Lorimer has said, ' in John Knox.' * This zealous dis- 
 ciple, who had counted it an honour to be allowed to carry a 
 sword before his master, stood forth immediately to wield the 
 
Pre-Rcformation Scotland. 125 
 
 spiritual sword which had fallen from his master's grasp, and 
 to wield it with a vigour and trenchant execution superior even 
 to his.' God sent them comfort after him, as he said. 
 
 It belongs to my successor to tell of the triumph and 
 portray the character of him whom Mr Froude has pronounced 
 to be ' the grandest figure in the entire history of the British 
 Reformation.' All that I must attempt, in closing, is to give 
 the briefest account of his preliminary labours. 
 
 Knox was bom at Giffordgate in Haddington in 1505, and 
 matriculated at the University of Glasgow in 1522. From that 
 date up to 1545, when he appears as sword-bearer to Wishart, 
 his life is to us almost a blank. Like Elijah the Tishbite, he 
 comes into view only to enter on his public work. Whatever 
 his early training may have been, he had by this time thoroughly 
 mastered the subjects in controversy between the two Churches, 
 and possibly, as Bayle supposes, the writings of the two greatest 
 doctors of the Western Church. * He received his first taste of 
 the truth ' from his fellow-townsman, Thomas Guillaume, one 
 of the Regent's chaplains, as he received his political principles 
 from his early instructor, John Major, also a native of East 
 Lothian, Ever since he had cast in his lot with Wishart, 
 he had been so harassed, that but for a refuge unexpectedly 
 opened up, he would have found it necessary to leave Scotland. 
 This refuge was the Castle of St Andrews, which the conspirators 
 had determined to hold, and in which numbers of those friendly 
 to the Reformation and the English alliance had already taken 
 shelter. Knox arrived about Pasche, 1547, in charge of the 
 sons of certain lairds in East Lothian. At that time there was 
 a truce between the citizens and the 'castilians,' as they were 
 called. The reforming citizens had access to the services in 
 the castle, and the chaplain of the garrison at times made his 
 way into the parish church and preached to the people. Knox 
 resumed there the system he had followed with good effect in 
 East Lothian, expounding in a colloquial manner the gospel of 
 St John, and making his pupils give account of their catechism 
 
t26 S^ Gilei Lectures. 
 
 in public, that even people who could not read, by hearing it 
 often repeated, might gain familiarity with it. 
 
 His great abilities as a teacher, and his wonderful gift of per- 
 suasive speech, soon attracted notice. Private efforts failing to 
 move him, a formal call to the ministry was addressed to him 
 from the pulpit by the chaplain in name of the rest. Yielding 
 to this, he soon made full proof of his ministry not only before 
 the rude garrison of the castle, but before the doctors of the 
 University and the citizens in the parish church. By his 
 sermons, catechisings, and disputations, the new doctrines gained 
 a hold on the minds of learned and unlearned which they never 
 really lost. But times of trial were to come ere the cause 
 should finally triumph. They who had taken into their hands 
 ' the sword of God ' were made to suffer by the sword, and had 
 to surrender the castle to the representative of the French king. 
 Those who had come to it for shelter, as well as those who had 
 conspired against the Cardinal, were dealt with as criminals of 
 the worst class. For nearly twenty months our Reformer had 
 to work in chains on board the galleys. Even then he main- 
 tained unshaken faith in God ; but he would have been more 
 than human if the iron had not entered into his soul, and traces 
 of the sternness thence arising had not long been visible in his 
 character. Early in 1549 he was released by English influence. 
 He was sent to Berwick, where he was as near to his country- 
 men as it was safe for him to go, and where many of them were 
 able to resort to him. He preached not only to the garrison 
 and citizens of Berwick, but also throughout the northern 
 counties, proving himself a true successor of those early 
 Scottish missionaries who had originally won over to the 
 Christian faith the Saxons of Northumbria. 
 
 His fame as a preacher and defender of the new doctrines 
 spread southwards, and he was appointed one of the royal 
 chaplains. In the autumn of 1552 he preached with great 
 power and faithfulness before the court of Edward VI., and with 
 his fellow-chaplains aided in the revision of the English Articles 
 
^re-Reformation Scotland. 127 
 
 and Prayer-Book. He refused a bishopric and a London 
 rectory, and continued to labour devotedly as a preacher un- 
 attached. He had a presentiment that the time he would have 
 to do so would be brief, and he improved it diligently. When 
 ' the bloody Mary ' succeeded to the throne, Knox, as a 
 foreigner, was especially warranted to leave the country and 
 reserve himself for happier times ; and he did so when it was 
 only not too late. The few years he spent abroad were to be 
 richly blessed to himself and his fellow-exiles. He at least had 
 not gone there to have his views of doctrine or church order 
 changed, but to have his spirit refreshed by counsel and com- 
 munion with brethren, and nerved for further achievements in 
 the service of their common Lord. He would have settled 
 down to quiet study in Geneva, but Calvin persuaded him to go 
 to Frankfort as pastor of the English congregation there ; and 
 on disputes arising in it, he secured an asylum for him and 
 his Puritan brethren beside himself Knox returned to his 
 native land to pay a short visit to his friends, and to bring his 
 mfe and her mother to Geneva. But he was obliged again and 
 again to prolong his visit. The cause of the Reformation had 
 made quiet progress in the immediately preceding years, with- 
 out the voice of the living preacher or any agency but the 
 private study of the Scriptures and the circulation of hymns 
 and poems. ' If he had not seen it with his own eyes, he 
 could not have believed it' Night and day they sobbed and 
 groaned for the bread of life, and now his preaching came to 
 them in demonstration of the Spirit and with power, and was 
 greatly blessed to many in Angus and Mearns, in Ayrshire 
 and the Lothians, and other parts. He administered the Lord's 
 supper to them, persuaded them to give up attending the 
 Popish worship, and bind themselves to uphold the truth, and 
 defend their brethren who did so.^ He urged the Queen 
 Regent to undertake the reformation of the Church, but with- 
 
 ^ Knox's History, vol. i., page 251. 
 
128 iS/ Giles^ LedureL 
 
 out success. He urged the nobles to do their duty, and 
 promising to return when they deemed the time had come for 
 this, he at length departed to his charge at Geneva. Before 
 he left, he had been summoned to appear before the bishops, 
 but this summons was 'cast.' Soon after his departure, he 
 was summoned again, and in his absence was condemned and 
 burned in effigy. 
 
 Archbishop Hamilton, who had succeeded Beaton as primate, 
 continued to hold council after council, to make feeble and fit- 
 ful efforts for the revival of the Church — to provide a catechism 
 and other helps for the priests in their work, and to execute 
 with rigour the laws against heretics. But all availed not to 
 save the Church or stem the tide which had set in. Time 
 was when reasonable concession and speedy reform might have 
 done so. Patrick Hamilton and Alexander Alesius had come 
 pleading for the free circulation of the Word of God, and the 
 free preaching of the great truths it contained ; and the one had 
 been burned, the other forced into exile. George Wishart had 
 come to reiterate the plea, and to contend for the right doctrine 
 and administration of the sacraments; and he also was put to 
 death. Willock and the reforming nobles had come even in 
 1558 to plead for a minimum of reform, which if granted, 
 might have saved the old organisation, and brought the new 
 life into it, as in England. But this too was refused. The 
 gnarled old tree was rotten to the core, and could not take in 
 the fresh sap. And now came Knox, not to ' sned the 
 branches,' but to lay his axe at the root of the tree and cut it 
 down as a cumberer of the ground. ' It was not a smooth 
 business,' as Carlyle says, ' but it was welcome surely, and 
 cheap at that price ; had it been far rougher on the whole, 
 cheap at any price as fife is. The people began to live;' and 
 as another has it, from being one of the rudest, poorest, most 
 turbulent races in Europe, became one of the most educated, 
 prosperous, orderly, and upright. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE REFORMATION, 1559 to 1572 a.d.i 
 
 By the Rev. Donald Macleod, D.D., Minister of the Park Church, 
 Glasgow ; and one of Her Majesty's Chaplains. 
 
 TT may be well to give at the outset a brief resume of the 
 ■*■ chief events between 1559 and 1572. Mary of Guise, who 
 acted as Regent for her daughter, had put the preachers of the 
 Reformed doctrine 'to the horn' — a process equivalent to 
 proclaiming them rebels. This led to a civil war between the 
 Lords of the Congregation, who had espoused the new opinions, 
 and the Regent, assisted by a strong body of French veterans. 
 In June 1560, the Regent died, and during the following month 
 the Protestants, with the aid of an English army, obtained the 
 mastery. The Confession of Faith was immediately afterwards 
 accepted by the Scottish Parliament. Next year Queen Mary 
 
 ^ The following authorities, among others, have been consulted : Laing's 
 edition of Knox's Works ; Booke of the Univcrsall Kirk ; Sir David Lindsay's 
 Works ; Peterkin ; Register of the Scotch Privy Council ; the Histories of 
 Wodrow, Calderwood, Keith, Tytler, Robertson, M'Crie, Froude, Cunning- 
 ham, and Burton ; Sprott's preface to Book of Common Order; Schierns' 
 Bothivell ; Life of Kit kaldy, &c. 
 
130 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 arrived from France, and began gradually to increase her 
 influence in the hope of ultimately restoring Romanism. Her 
 marriage to Darnley was connected with this design, and might 
 have led to serious results, had not the assassination of Rizzio 
 in 1566, and the murder of Darnley in 1567, plunged the 
 country into new confusion. The surrender of the queen at 
 Carberry-hill, and her defeat at Langside the following year, 
 completed for a time the ruin of Mary's power in Scotland. 
 The Regent Moray, during his brief career, gave for the first time 
 the sanction of the Crown to the Reformation ; but his death 
 in 1570 involved the country again in civil war. Until 1573, 
 the Queen's party, under the leadership of Maitland of Lething- 
 ton and Kirkaldy of Grange, held Edinburgh Castle. In the 
 five years from the abdication of Mary at Lochleven, till 
 Edinburgh Castle fell in 1573, no fewer than four regents were 
 appointed ; and of these two were assassinated. The war was 
 bitter and bloody, but ended in the final overthrow of the 
 hopes of the queen, and, with her, of the Romish Church in 
 Scotland. 
 
 The time had now arrived when the final issue betwixt 
 Romanism and Protestantism was to be tried in Scotland. 
 
 It was June 1559, and Perth was full of determined men, 
 who, laying aside for the time steel jacket and morion, so as not 
 to appear openly in arms against the government, had gathered 
 to display their sympathy with the Reformers. The Queen- 
 Regent, Mary of Guise, had mustered her forces at Stirling, 
 and had vowed that though ' the preachers preached as truly as 
 St Paul,' she would silence them. On the 25th of the month 
 John Knox arrived at Perth, and the cause of the Reforma- 
 tion passed into the strong hands of the man who, within a 
 year, was to carry it to victory. 
 
 When Knox began the great struggle of his life, he was 
 upwards of fifty-four years of age. He had passed through 
 many experiences. For ten years he had been a priest of the 
 
The Reformation. 131 
 
 Romish Church : he had stood sword m hand beside George 
 Wishart, when he, so soon to become a martyr, preached 
 in the Lothians : he had shared the rough fortunes of the 
 garrison of St Andrews : he had been for nearly two years 
 a galley-slave, now sweltering under the burning sun of the 
 Loire, and now chained to the oar on the German Ocean : 
 for four years he had ministered in England, and, alien as 
 he was, had risen through sheer force of character to be 
 one of the king's chaplains and his personal friend, to find 
 himself consulted on delicate affairs affecting the Church, and 
 to have a bishopric within his gift : he had lived for several 
 years on the Continent in close intercourse with some of 
 the keenest intellects of that or any other age ; and when he 
 now left his foreign home, it was amid the ' weeping of grave 
 men' who had learned to love as well as to venerate him. 
 Although he had hitherto been only for a comparatively short 
 period actively engaged as a preacher in his native land, yet 
 he was already recognised as the leading man of his party. 
 His correspondence abroad had been extensive, and his influ- 
 ence' powerful. Thus ripe in experience and worn with hard 
 service, he threw himself into the front rank of the Reforma- 
 tion; and, as if possessed of some inherent right, he was 
 accepted from the first as its chief. ' I assure you,' said 
 Randolph, years afterwards, in a letter to Secretary Cecil, ' the 
 voice of that one man is able, in an hour, to put more life in 
 us than six hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears. 
 To know John Knox is to know the Scotch Reformation, 
 for he embodies at once the virtues and the faults which char- 
 acterised the movement. It is no exaggeration to say that 
 during the stirring period under review his voice was more 
 powerful than that of the sovereign or of any statesman. He 
 was pre-eminently patriot as well as preacher, statesman as 
 well as ecclesiastic. Many of the state-papers now preserved 
 in the English Records Office are in his handwriting, and 
 are known to have been his composition. His influence, 
 
132 S^ Gi/es' Lectures. 
 
 while founded on the response which the conscience of the 
 nation gave to the truth he preached with a voice of thunder, 
 did not lack the support that such carnal weapons as sword and 
 spear supplied. He had only to issue his summons, and thou- 
 sands of steel bonnets were ready to march across moor and 
 over mountain to enforce his policy. For years the General 
 Assembly was more representative of the popular will than was 
 the secular government. It is true that the preachers did not 
 always gain the day against the barons ; but when they failed, it 
 was on points which were not calculated to rouse enthusiasm. 
 It was not to be expected that the people would rush to arms 
 when the question in dispute was the amount of stipend to be 
 paid to ministers and schoolmasters, or when the sackcloth 
 sheet was to be enforced on the unwilling lords. On these two 
 points, the Church certainly failed in its contention with the 
 Privy Council and the Parliament ; but on all others the voice 
 of the General Assembly was practically the voice of the nation. 
 And Knox was the very soul of the Assembly. There were 
 others there — Willock, Craig, Winram, Erskine of Dun, men 
 of learning and force of character — whose names are not un- 
 worthy to be compared with his. The Reformation certainly 
 owed much to the great ability and statesmanship of the 
 Regent Moray; but Knox was its embodiment. We shall 
 therefore deal with the Reformation and Knox as identical 
 terms, and speak of the Cofifession of Faith as Knox's Con- 
 fession; of the Book of Commo/i Prayer as Knox's Liturgy; 
 of the Genevan Catechism and Psalm-books as Knox's Cate- 
 chism and Psalm-books ; and of the Book of Discipline as an 
 expression of his genius. We shall in this way be able, without 
 any sacrifice of historical truth, to create a more living picture 
 of the forces then at work, by investing them with a certain 
 personal interest. 
 
 I propose to direct your attention to two chief topics : 
 I. The Church system and general polity of the Reformation ; 
 and II. The character and work of Knox. 
 
The Reformation. 133 
 
 I. The fundamental principle of the Reformation was the 
 paramount authority of Holy Scripture. Not the Church 
 alone, but the nation and every member of the nation were 
 bound to obey the Word of God. The Church and the 
 nation were with Knox identical terms ; and not with him 
 only, for indeed neither Romish Church nor Protestant, no 
 statesman or theologian of that time, ever dreamed of civil 
 government being purely secular. Voluntaryism in the modem 
 sense was not even discussed. The battle, therefore, which 
 had primarily to be waged, was between the authority of 
 Scripture and the authority of the Pope. The Reformation 
 under Knox did not turn on questions of ecclesiastical order, 
 like the later contest between Prelacy and Presbytery. The 
 peculiar claims of Presbytery were as yet scarcely asserted, 
 though they were acted upon. Nor did it turn then, as it did 
 nearly a century afterwards, on the lawfulness of Liturgies. It 
 was a contest, as Kjiox would unhesitatingly have phrased it, 
 betwixt the authority of God as given in His Word, and the 
 authority of all the Bishops, Cardinals, and Councils who 
 dared to oppose or add to that Word. The one was true, the 
 other was false; the one was of God, the other of man. With 
 such convictions regarding the absolute rule of Scripture, he 
 could make no compromises. The duty of the Church was to 
 make known what the Scriptures taught; and, unless contrary 
 Scripture could be shewn, it was the duty of king and people 
 to submit. 
 
 This principle was entirely different from that which 
 primarily determined the Reformation in England. With 
 Henry VHI. the chief question was the supremacy of the 
 crown, and as long as authority was transferred from the Pope 
 to the English monarch, he cared little for any change in 
 doctrine or in ritual. For many years the mass was virtually 
 retained, and the desire of the king to preserve historical con- 
 tinuity prevented all sudden changes in public service. But 
 in Scotland the Reformation was the work of the people, and | 
 
134 "SV Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 effected in spite of the Executive. The barons, with a few 
 exceptions, cared little for the doctrines of the preachers. 
 Nearly all of them were governed by purely selfish motives, and 
 many of them were ready to return to Rome, as some did 
 return, when the Reformation no longer served their interests. 
 The movement was essentially a popular movement, conse- 
 quent on newly awakened religious convictions, and partaking 
 of the excitement which usually accompanies such outbursts. 
 A great modern authority has told us that the law of reaction 
 is the true key to history, and the saying finds a vivid illus- 
 tration here. The rupture with the past was complete. At 
 one bound the Church leaped over ten centuries, and went 
 back to the Scriptures and the early Fathers. Much that was 
 beautiful and reverent may thereby have been sacrificed, but 
 the principle was the only logical one by which the popular 
 movement towards reform could then have been conducted. 
 
 The greatness of Knox can be measured better by what he 
 tried to build up than even by his intrepidity and firmness in 
 attacking the errors and corruptions which had demoralised 
 both the Church and Society, We stand amazed at the 
 rapidity with which the Church of the Reformation was 
 furnished not merely with a Confession of Faith, but with a 
 richness and variety of instrumentality, in startling contrast to 
 the denuded and unsystematic condition of the. Church now. 
 
 We shall describe the system which it was then proposed to 
 establish, under the following heads : (i) The doctrine of the 
 Church ; (2) The worship of the Church ; (3) The discipline of 
 the Church. 
 
 (i) In four days after Commission had been given by the 
 Scotch Parliament of 1560 to Knox and his four associates to 
 draw up a statement of doctrine, they were able to lay before it 
 a Confession of Faith which may in many respects be favourably 
 compared with the later symbol of the Westminster Divines. It 
 was not the first experience which Knox had in drawing up a 
 doctrinal system. He had assisted at the revision of the English 
 
The Reformation. 135 
 
 Articles of Edward VI. in 1552, and had himself compiled a 
 Confession for the English congregation of Geneva. The 
 Scotch Confession, however, while betraying acquaintance 
 with other models, is original, independent, and masterly. It 
 is divided into twenty-five sections, treating of the principal 
 subjects with which it is the province of theology to deal. 
 The general scope of the treatment is Calvinistic, as might 
 have been expected from the relationship of Knox and the 
 Reformers generally to the great Genevan doctor ; nevertheless, 
 the spirit of the whole is broader, more human, and, if we 
 might use the expression, more modern than that of the West- 
 minster Standards. So satisfactory did it appear to such a 
 man as Edward Irving, that he used to read it twice a year 
 to his London congregation. 'This document,' he says, 'is 
 written in the most honest, straightforward, manly style, without 
 compliment or flattery, without affectation of logical precision 
 or learned accuracy, as if it came fresh from the heart of 
 laborious workmen, all day long busy with the preaching 
 of the truth, and sitting down at night and embodying the 
 heads of what they continually taught. Its doctrine is sound ; 
 its expression is clear ; its spirit is large and liberal ; its 
 dignity is personal and not dogmatic, and it is redolent with 
 the unction of holiness and truth.' So also does another 
 authority, widely removed from Irving, speak of it. 'As far 
 back as the Reformation,' says Dean Stanley, ' there were 
 indications of deeper insight — exceptional and quaint, but so 
 expressive as to vindicate for Christianity, even then, the widest 
 range which future discoveries may open before it. In the 
 first Confession of John Knox, the Reformers had perceived 
 what had been so long concealed from the eyes of the School- 
 men and the Fathers — that the most positive expressions, even 
 of their own convictions, were not guaranteed from imperfec- 
 tion or mutability ; and the entreaty with which that Confession 
 is prefaced, contains at once a fine example of true Christian 
 humility, and the stimulus to the noblest Christian ambition : 
 
130 'S'/ ales' Lecfures. 
 
 " We conjure you if any man will note in this our Confession 
 any article or sentence repugnant to God's Holy Word, that it 
 would please him of his gentleness, and for Christian charity's 
 sake, to admonish us of the same in writing, and we upon our 
 honour and fidelity do promise him satisfaction from the Holy 
 Scriptures, or due reformation of that which he shall prove to 
 be amiss." ' For nearly a hundred years this Confession was 
 the only recognised standard of the Church of Scotland. The 
 greatest battles the Church ever waged were fought under it. 
 It was the authoritative creed of the Melvilles, the Hendersons, 
 the Rutherfords, and must ever be regarded as an extraordinary 
 evidence of the intellectual grasp and theological attainment of 
 those who, in four days, drew up such a document to be 
 adopted by the legislature of their country, 
 
 (2) But Knox had mature views regarding the necessity of 
 furnishing the Church with a suitable guide for its worship, as 
 well as its faith. Hitherto, the Protestants had been in the 
 habit of using the English Liturgy of Edward VI. ; but John 
 Knox had had a twofold experience regarding Liturgies. He 
 was intimately acquainted with the Anglican Prayer-book of 
 that time ; and he had been forced more than once to discuss 
 its merits. He was also familiar with the Liturgy of Geneva, 
 and as soon as he could assert his influence, he did not hesitate 
 to recommend the substitution of the Swiss Prayer-book for 
 that of England. He disapproved of what he termed the 
 'mingle-mangle' of the Anglican Liturgy. He noticed how 
 much room was still given in it for customs that might lead 
 back to superstition, and for statements that might naturally 
 reintroduce in substance the very doctrines of priestly power 
 against which he had contended. And, in spite of all that 
 England owes to her Prayer-book — the grandest devotional 
 service ever furnished to a Christian Church — we cannot, in the 
 light of modern controversies, deny that Knox had some ground 
 for the suspicions which he entertained as to the dangers 
 that might accrue from the ambiguous character of many 
 
The Reformation. 137 
 
 passages. He accordingly persuaded the Assembly to take the 
 Genevan Prayer-book as a basis ; and in four years afterwards, 
 what is popularly termed Knox's Liturgy became the Service- 
 book of the Church of Scotland. With the exception of one 
 or two passages that are coloured with the passionate feeling of 
 the time, it is a dignified and impressive Liturgy, not altogether 
 unworthy to be compared with that of the sister Church. The 
 services are copious and varied. There are forms of prayer for 
 public worship, for the administration of the sacraments, for 
 marriage, for visitation of the sick ; besides services for special 
 occasions, such as the ordination of ministers, the observance 
 of fasts, and the administration of ecclesiastical discipline. 
 A comparatively large provision was also made for praise, 
 hymns as well as psalms being printed with fixed tunes, 
 and care taken that the people should be taught to sing 
 them well. After the issue of the Psalter in 1564, there com- 
 menced those interesting institutions called ' Sang Schules,' 
 which not only stimulated the study of music in Scotland, but 
 secured great efficiency in congregational singing. We find, for 
 example, an instance of as many as two thousand people sing- 
 ing the second version of the 124th Psalm, to the very music 
 to which it is still sung, and able to do so with a harmony 
 in four parts. 
 
 The Liturgy of Knox was not imposed with exclusive strict- 
 ness, for it might be used merely as a guide, and room was 
 expressly afforded after sermon for extempore prayer. Yet there 
 can be little doubt that the practice of the Church for many 
 years was towards a comparatively strict use of the Prayer-book. 
 It was enjoined that in all large towns prayers should be 
 read daily in church, except when the week-day sermon was 
 preached; and in other places, not supplied with a fixed 
 ministry, the ' reader ' was to gather the people at least once a 
 week, for the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and of the pre- 
 scribed prayers. For a hundred years this Liturgy of Knox 
 was the law of the Church of Scotland, and for about seventy 
 
138 Sf ales' LeduriL 
 
 years it was universally observed. Its abandonment was in 
 consequence not of Scotch or Presbyterian influence, but from 
 the teaching of English sectaries ; and by a strange reversal 
 of modern associations, it was rebuked by the General 
 Assemblies of that time as an ' innovation,' As in the case of 
 the Confessioji of Faith, still more in regard to the devotional 
 equipment of the Church, we may look back to the earlier 
 years of her history with feelings of regret, that what appears 
 the healthier, richer, and more efficient system of our first 
 Reformers should ever have been superseded. Besides the 
 Liturgy, a Catechism was supplied for the instruction of children, 
 to which were attached forms of prayer for daily use in the 
 household, for grace before meat, and for special occasions. 
 The Church thus took a powerful grasp of the religious neces- 
 sities of the country, and met its requirements with an almost 
 imperial plan of Christian training. Nothing essential was left 
 to the amateur efforts of individuals or voluntary societies, but 
 a well-considered scheme was at once established, practical and 
 far-reaching, and fortunately not hindered in its application by 
 sectarian division within the dominant Protestantism. 
 
 (3) The Book of Disciplme is perhaps even a greater testi- 
 mony to the patriotism and statesmanship of Knox. It was a 
 book of discipline in the sense of the Latin Disciplma — a book 
 of training — the statute-book of the Church, in which his plan 
 for educating the people as a Christian commonwealth was 
 exhibited. It therefore embraced not merely the correction of 
 morals, as the term ' church discipline ' usually signifies, but the 
 whole polity of the Church, as distinct from its creed or the 
 order of its worship. It includes the organisation of the 
 Church in respect of its office-bearers ; the regulation of 
 schools and colleges with their endowments, and the nature 
 of the education to be imparted ; the maintenance of the poor ; 
 and the principles on which ecclesiastical censures are to be 
 administered. We shall take a brief survey of each of these 
 important subjects. 
 
The Reformation. 139 
 
 {a) The Organisation of the Church. — It would be difficult to 
 rank under any of the usual ecclesiastical systems the type of 
 Church organisation which prevailed during the first twenty 
 years of the Reformation. Knox did not entertain any very 
 strong beliefs as to the necessity of ordination, although his 
 views respecting the sacraments were 'higher' than what are 
 now practically held. He did not believe that any special 
 grace or Apostolic descent of authority was received from the 
 mere laying on of hands. Personally, he regarded the call of 
 the people of God (for from the first the Church recognised the 
 popular voice in the election of ministers), the trial of gifts by 
 the Church, and due appointment, as all that was necessary 
 for valid orders. But whatever value may lie in the doctrine of 
 Apostolic succession, the Church of Scotland, in the days of 
 Knox, and certainly the Church since 1638, did possess it 
 through its presbyters. Nearly all the first ministers of the 
 Church had previously been priests, and although irregularity 
 in the form of ordination crept in during the first twenty 
 years of its history, yet this quickly vanished with the Second 
 Book of Discipline, and the High Church Presbyterianism of the 
 Melvilles. The validity of orders through the line of Presbyters 
 was then recognised and acted on by the Church of England, 
 and by all the churches of the Reformation, The framers of 
 the Thirty-nine Articles, and such divines as Tillotson, Grindall, 
 and even the High Church Bancroft, acknowledged the position 
 of those ordained by presbyters alone. Presbyterian ministers 
 were freely admitted, and even made bishops, without reordina- 
 tion.* But the point of orders was subordinate in the days of 
 Knox to the more difficult problem, as to how the spiritual 
 wants of the country were to be overtaken at all. The first 
 General Assembly consisted of forty-two members ; and of 
 these only six were ministers. On counting up the names of all 
 
 ^ See a series of papers on Apostolic Succession in the Christian In- 
 strtcctor for 1838 ; also a Sermon preached in 1S73 before the Synod of 
 Aberdeen, by Rev. Geo. W. Sprott. 
 
14° 'S^ ales' Lectures. 
 
 those, lay or clerical, throughout the country, who, in addi- 
 tion to the members of Assembly, were considered suitable for 
 acting as ministers or readers, only forty-three could be named. 
 There were therefore not ninety persons in the whole country 
 on whom the first General Assembly could rely for assistance 
 in the great work committed to its charge. Common-sense 
 dictated the one course which was fitted for utilising these 
 small resources. The basis of the Church system was Presby- 
 terian, for it consisted of the three offices of presbyter, elder, 
 and deacon — whose functions were similar to those now 
 associated with the names — but following the example of some 
 of the foreign Churches, Scotland was divided into ten dioceses 
 or districts, over each of which it was proposed that a Super- 
 intendent should be appointed. These superintendents were 
 not in any sense bishops. They might be laymen, were under 
 the authority of the Assembly, and had no exclusive right to 
 ordain. There was also another extremely useful office 
 recognised — namely, that of Readers. Teachers or Doctors 
 were also recognised as Church functionaries. This system 
 was the best possible for the time. It is stamped with the 
 common-sense of Knox, who, anything but an ecclesiastical 
 doctrinaire, took the readiest instruments for accomplishing 
 the work in hand. The effect justified the practical wisdom 
 of the Reformer, for so great was the advance that, in 1567, 
 there were about two hundred and eighty-nine ministers and 
 seven hundred and fifteen readers, with five superintendents, 
 labouring in the Church. 
 
 (^) The provision made for ecclesiastical discipline was 
 ample, through all the various stages of humiliation, from 
 privy censure to excommunication. The severity with which 
 it was exercised is a painful feature in the history of the 
 Reformation. It was one of the few customs of the Romish 
 Church which the Protestants preserved. But while we may 
 feel justified in condemning them, we must not forget that 
 such efforts were urgently needed in order to create a higher 
 
The Reformation. 141 
 
 public tone on questions of morality. Everything we know 
 tends to prove that all ranks of society were steeped in 
 shameless coarseness. The Reformers, as Christian men, could 
 not admit the excuse that other countries were equally bad, or 
 that such was 'the habit of the times.' They had their Bibles 
 in their hands, and knew what God required of His Church ; 
 and so they determined to purify it by reproving wrongdoers, 
 as well as by preaching the gospel. It is to their credit that 
 they were impartial as well as brave in their rebukes. No class 
 was spared. The Lord High Treasurer was dealt with as 
 faithfully as the humblest peasant ; and on none did the hand 
 of the Church fall with greater severity than upon any minister 
 overtaken in a fault. The result, for a time at least, and so 
 far as appearances went, justified the stern regime. Knox could 
 challenge the verdict of his contemporaries as to the beneficial 
 effect upon society. 
 
 {c) The rest of the Book of Discipline referred chiefly to the 
 uses to which the revenues of the ancient Church were to be 
 applied. The property of the Romish Church was enormous, 
 amounting to about one-half of that of the whole kingdom, 
 and the Church, the poor, and the education of the people, 
 were the three objects to which it was proposed to dedicate a 
 proportion of these resources. A modest but sufficient pro- 
 vision was to be laid aside for the decent sustenance of the 
 ministry ; the deserving poor were to be supported in their own 
 parishes at the sight of the elders and deacons ; and the very 
 highest possible education — far higher than ever has been 
 attained since — was to be supplied to the people. The 
 commonwealth had a right, Knox said, to assert a paramount 
 claim on every child, and to compel it to be educated. If poor, 
 their expenses were to be paid ; but no father, of whatsoever 
 estate or condition, was 'to use his children at his own 
 phantasy,' but must ' be compelled to bring them up in learning 
 and virtue.' Schoolmasters were accordingly to be attached 
 to every church ; while in * upland ' districts, the reader was to 
 
142 Sf Gties' Lectures. 
 
 attend to the necessities of the young. Grammar or secondary 
 schools were to be erected in every considerable town ; and the 
 whole system linked on to the universities. In the parish 
 school, instruction was to be given, not only in elementary 
 subjects, but in the rudiments of Latin ; while in the grammar- 
 schools, the tongues — embracing Latin, French, and perhaps 
 Greek — rhetoric, and philosophy, were to be taught. Once 
 every quarter the pupils at all the schools were to be examined, 
 and any scholar, however poor, shewing aptitude for learning, 
 was to be directed in his studies, through the grammar-school 
 to the university. The curriculum for such students -"as long 
 and thorough, extending, in the case of the learned professions, 
 to at least the twenty-fourth year of a man's age. Liberal 
 endowments were proposed for the teachers and professors, and 
 a splendidly equipped staff was to be appointed to each of the 
 universities. For the maintenance of this magnificent national 
 system, embracing the support of the poor, the efficiency of the 
 Church, and the education of the whole body of the people, it 
 was proposed to take as much as was requisite from the enor- 
 mous endowments of the ancient Church. A grander scheme 
 for the elevation of a people never emanated from the brain 
 of patriot or statesman — and it was a scheme whose accom- 
 plishment was then quite within the power of the nation. If 
 Scotland was, in one aspect of the polity, to be made a kind 
 of modern theocracy, in which all departments of government 
 were to be guided by Scriptural texts and examples, it was, 
 according to another part, to be raised to the front rank 
 among educated nations. The former design would un- 
 doubtedly have broken down when the relative functions of the 
 civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions came to be determined. 
 For Knox drew no very distinct line betwixt the two. The 
 State was as much bound to govern the Church and enforce 
 Scriptural rule on its observance, as the Church was bound 
 to press Scriptural rule on the State. But the educational 
 project sketched by Knox is magnificent. 
 
The Reformatioji. 143 
 
 Such were the system, the creed, the worship, the pohty of 
 the Church of the Reformation ; and when we contemplate the 
 massive structure thus planned in the space of four years, 
 chiefly by the genius of one man, we know not which is the 
 more prominent feeling — astonishment at the grandeur of the 
 system, or indignation at the unprincipled cupidity of the 
 nobility and barons which prevented its execution. For the 
 barons, who were ready to adopt the Confessioji of Faith, re- 
 fused the Book of Discipline. It was ' but a devout imagina- 
 tion,' said worldly-wise Lethington ; and he was right. Assent 
 to abstract doctrines was very different from submission to any 
 interference with dissolute living, and still more ftfem thwarted 
 avarice. ' The belly hath no ears,' replied Knox, who felt that 
 reasoning and principle were alike thrown away upon the 
 hungry landowners who had enlisted in the army of reform for 
 the sake of the plunder consequent on its victories. There 
 were doubtless conscientious and patriotic men like Argyll, 
 Moray, and Glencaim among them, who were in full sympathy 
 with the preachers ; but they were the exception. For years 
 they had as a class been bribed either by England or France ; 
 and they now displayed a rapacity, the disgrace of which can 
 only be equalled by the injury inflicted upon the country. 
 In vain the preachers protested. They alone remained pure of 
 the taint of avarice. For years the ministers, cheated by false 
 promises and resolutions of the Privy Council, and denied 
 possession even of manse or glebe, lived in honourable 
 beggary. 
 
 II. Character and Work of Knox. — Two figures stand out 
 from the crowd in the stirring scenery of the Reformation in 
 Scotland. John Knox and Queen Mary are the historical 
 representatives of the two great cuiTents of opinion and 
 policy which then contended for the mastery. They were 
 each endowed with an intellect of unusual vigour, with keen 
 political insight, and with a most resolute will. Mary was 
 
144 'S'/ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 in her own way almost as remarkable as Knox. To quick- 
 ness of perception, subtlety of project, and heroic bravery, 
 she added a beauty and fascination which supplied exquisite 
 instruments for her skilful and ceaseless diplomacy. She 
 had all the artistic grace and charm of the Stuarts ; and if 
 some of their faults also, these were combined with greater 
 mental power and force of character than were found perhaps 
 in any other of her race. Every one must regard with 
 generous pity the young girl whose misfortune it was to be 
 cast into a position for which by temperament and education 
 she was so utterly unfitted. We must admire her devoted 
 loyalty to her creed — a virtue by which some others of her race 
 also lost their crowns. But while doing so, we join issue 
 with the romantic school which, affecting a sentimental loyalty 
 to the Stuarts, would canonise Mary as a saint and martyr. 
 We have a very different conviction regarding her. From 
 the first, she only lacked opportunity to have extinguished the 
 Reformation in a sea of blood; and in all her coquetting 
 with the Protestants, the smooth glove she wore covered a 
 gauntlet of steel. She had been taught as a girl to gaze 
 upon the martyrdoms of which the Huguenots were the 
 victims. For some time after her arrival in Scotland, she 
 acted her part skilfully and without guilt; but the barbarous 
 assassination of Rizzio, perpetrated under circumstances of 
 the coarsest brutality, seems to have demoralised her finer 
 nature. That terrible scene, when the poor wretch, clutch- 
 ing at his mistress for protection, was dragged forth to his 
 doom by the hard-featured barons, and the still more terrible 
 discovery of the complicity of her husband Darnley — had 
 awakened a fierce desire for revenge. The malign influence of 
 Bothwell completed the moral injury she had sustained, and 
 all ended — God knows alone through what gradual steps she 
 was led on ! — in the terrible crime of Kirk-o'-Field. 
 
 John Knox has been the object of almost as keen detraction 
 as Queen Mary, but the closer our examination, the more 
 
The Reformation. 145 
 
 we are forced to recognise in him one of the noblest men — 
 sincere, truthful and brave— our country ever produced. He 
 has been described as a rigid Puritan who frowned down 
 laughter and innocent amusements ; a ruthless iconoclast, to 
 whom we are indebted for roofless cathedrals and ruined abbeys; 
 as intolerant as any cardinal or inquisitor, exchanging the 
 infallibility of the Pope for that of himself and the General 
 Assembly. Men suppose they can trace the influence of Knox 
 in the miserable barns which have taken the place of the old 
 Gothic churches, and throw upon him the blame of the ugliness 
 which has so long characterised our ecclesiastical system. 
 
 Now, we would not conceal the faults with which Knox is 
 fairly chargeable. The language he employed — sometimes in 
 public prayer — regarding the religion and character of Mary, 
 seemed even to his contemporaries needlessly coarse and 
 sti^ong. His interviews with the Queen were marked not 
 by the dexterity of the courtier, but by the unflinching faith- 
 fulness of a man to whom a great cause was intrusted. * I 
 know that many have complained,' he said on his death-bed, 
 'much and loudly, and do still complain of my too great severity; 
 but God knows that my mind was always free from hatred to 
 the persons of those against whom I denounced the heavy judg- 
 ments of God. . . . For a certain reverential fear of my God 
 who called me, and was pleased of his grace to make me a 
 Steward of divine mysteries . . . had such powerful effect as 
 to make me utter so intrepidly whatever the Lord had put into 
 my mouth, without any respect of persons. Therefore I profess 
 before God and his own holy angels that I never made gain of 
 the sacred word of God, that I never studied to please men, 
 never indulged my own private passions or those of others, 
 but faithfully distributed the talent intrusted to my care for the 
 edification of the Church over which I did watch. Whatever 
 obloquy wicked men may throw upon me respecting this 
 matter, I rejoice in the testimony of a good conscience.' 
 ' It was unfortunately not possible,' writes Carlyle, ' to be 
 
 J 
 
14^ St ales' Lectures. 
 
 polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to 
 the Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to 
 see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing 
 ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled underfoot of 
 Falsehoods, Formulas, and the Devil's Cause, had no method of 
 making himself agreeable.' It must, however, be remembered 
 that this method of speaking to a sovereign was not un- 
 common in that period. It may be paralleled by the language 
 Latimer privately addressed to King Henry VIII., and by the 
 sermons preached by Reginald Pole regarding the marriage of 
 Anne Boleyn. There are indeed things which Knox has 
 written that we wish he had never penned. The models he 
 put before him were unfortunately borrowed more from the 
 Old than from the New Testament ; and Samuel slaying Agag, 
 Elijah executing the priests of Baal, the Israelites extermin- 
 ating the Canaanites, and such-like events, were recognised 
 not only as teaching general principles, but as affording to 
 himself title to apply the principles, and to act towards 
 Mary and her co-religionists with the rigour of ancient 
 Judaism. The man, indeed, felt he had no choice. The true 
 key to his severity is to be found in nothing personal, but 
 in his deep awe of God's word and in the belief that he 
 was God's prophet, sent to apply that word to every political 
 as well as religious matter that might occur. ' I find no more 
 privilege granted unto kings by God, more than unto the 
 people to offend God's majesty,' were his grave words to 
 Lethington ; but he adds : ' When kings do expressly oppose 
 themselves to God's commandment, the people are bound 
 to execute God's law upon them.' Such principles, when 
 cautiously interpreted, are undoubtedly true, but they become 
 dangerous if their application is to be left in the hands of 
 every self-constituted judge of the occasion which renders their 
 vindication necessary. 
 
 But without concealing those defects and exaggerations, we 
 believe that Knox was the very opposite of what a certain type 
 
The Reformation. 147 
 
 of detractors would fain represent him. So far from being a 
 sour Puritan, his history shews a man full of humour and 
 bonhomfnie, with an intense sense of the ludicrous. Our space 
 does not admit of our giving illustrations of the humour with 
 which his history abounds. We would simply refer to the 
 descriptions of the carrying 'the young Sanct Geile,' and of 
 the fray between the partisans of the two bishops in' Glasgow 
 Cathedral. 
 
 There was surely something of the geniality of Luther in 
 one who on his death-bed caused a visitor ' pierce ane hoggit of 
 wine which was in the cellar, and willed the said Archibald to 
 send for more as long as it lasted, for he would never tarry 
 until it were drunken.' He indeed denounced dancing at the 
 court, and put down Maid Marian and the May-pole ; but we 
 have too much evidence as to the character of the dancing and 
 of the popular sports of those times, not to attribute his con- 
 demnations to other causes than harsh Puritanism. He was 
 certainly intolerant, but toleration in the modern sense is an 
 anachronism in the sixteenth century. He insisted on the 
 suppression of the mass, whether in the Queen's chapel or in 
 the remote Baronial keep. On the authority of a verse in the 
 Old Testament, he even urged the execution of the ' mass- 
 mongering papists ' as idolaters. But putting aside doctrinal 
 beliefs, we must not forget that the mass was then the symbol 
 of a system which was pledged to exterminate Knox and every 
 Protestant. The Council of Trent was then issuing its decrees 
 for the extinction of heretics, and the Catholic powers, including 
 Queen Mary herself, were leagued for their execution. The 
 dark-minded Philip was filling Spain with autos-da-fe; Alva was 
 ravaging the Netherlands ; the Duchess of Parma was crushing 
 liberty in Holland ; France was preparing for St Bartholomew ; 
 even Elizabeth of England was but a half-hearted Protestant. 
 It would have required superhuman toleration in a man of 
 the keen political insight of Knox to remain indifferent to 
 the possible destruction of faith and liberty, of which every mass-3. 
 
148 Sf dies' Lectures. 
 
 that was celebrated was practically the pledge. Even now we 
 could not view with calmness a Queen in visible opposition to 
 the Protestant faith, and bringing her priest with bell and candle 
 to every castle she visited. Knox saw how Mary from the day 
 of her arrival in Holyrood was by her bewitching grace acting 
 as a solvent on the stern convictions of his associates. Moray 
 for a time was fascinated ; Lethington was won over. The 
 men who tried to ' swim betwixt two waters ' were increasing ; 
 Popery began to shew itself ! It was necessary for Knox and 
 the preachers to stand firm. The mass was idolatry ; and if 
 the country would escape the judgments with which God had 
 visited the sins of the Kings of Judah and Israel, the Queen 
 must not be privileged to disobey Jehovah. But his intoler- 
 ance was in word only, for whatever he may have said or urged, 
 it must be remembered that there was no martyrdom during 
 the time Knox had influence. He was certainly intolerant in 
 the modern sense ; but it was precisely such intolerance as 
 could alone have produced the Reformation. The colourless 
 ' Liberal Thought ' of the present day, with its hesitation as to 
 all religious beliefs, would never have emancipated Scotland. It 
 required the firm, almost relentless, grasp of determined men, 
 who had no doubts, but who could boldly say, 'Thus saith 
 the Lord,' as theyjiurled falsehood and superstition from their 
 seats, and built up religion and political freedom. 
 
 It has long been the habit to refer every ruined shrine in 
 Scotland to the vandalism of Knox and the Reformers ; and 
 there is perhaps no class of Scotchmen who condemn Knox 
 on this account more than the landed gentry, who stand aloof 
 from the Church of Knox. There is no class, however, who 
 are less entitled to be heard in accusation. Knox did his best 
 to check ' the rascal multitude * which ruined the churches of 
 Perth and destroyed Scone. Cathedrals, abbeys, and churches 
 were undoubtedly cleansed of their images, altars, and other 
 superstitious symbols ; and monastic establishments and one or 
 two cathedrals received even a rougher handling. But the 
 
The Reformation. 1 49 
 
 destruction effected by the Reformers in a time of great popular 
 excitement is not to be compared with that caused by the 
 invading armies of England, and was infinitely less than 
 what was produced by the sacrilegious penuriousness and 
 carelessness of the Scotch heritors. Were we to trace the 
 causes to which we must attribute, on the one hand, the utter 
 ruin of so many ancient and noble piles, and on the other, the 
 meanness of so many of the edifices which now serve as parish 
 churches, it would be found that the connection is very 
 slight with the Reformation or with any principle inherent in 
 Presbyterianism. One of the keenest controversies Knox had 
 with the Privy Council was to secure the repair of churches, 
 'in such a manner as appertaineth as well to the majesty of the 
 Word of God as unto the ease and commoditie of the 
 people.' The spirit of Puritanism imported into Scotland 
 a century afterwards, undoubtedly did much to destroy the 
 feeling of art among the people ; but the expense of upholding 
 the ancient buildings, the value of the lead and slates which 
 protected them, and their convenience as quarries from which 
 ready-made materials might be had for erecting farm-houses or 
 mansions, have demolished our churches and abbeys infinitely 
 more than ever Knox did. 
 
 But without dwelling further on the misrepresentations of 
 which Knox has been the subject, let us glance at the work he 
 accomplished besides that already sketched. One work of 
 Knox was the creation of a new class in Scotland — the seed of 
 the nation that was to be — religious, educated, strong in convic- 
 tion even to bigotry, self-reliant, industrious and bold. Hitherto 
 the feudal system had placed all the power of the country 
 in the hands of the great lords and barons. The burghs had 
 perhaps more than a semblance of freedom from feudal depend- 
 ence, but it was little more than a semblance. Neither the 
 lesser barons, living in their * Peels,' round which clustered the 
 cots of hinds and shepherds, nor the villagers dwelling near 
 the parish church or by the great abbey, ever dreamed of 
 
150 S^ Giles' Lecher es. 
 
 asserting their individual opinions or their rights. There was 
 no middle class, there were no Commons to form a Third Estate 
 along with the Crown and the temporal and spiritual peers. 
 But the Reformation, as it was founded on an appeal to ' every 
 man's conscience in the sight of God,' accompanied by enlight- 
 ened insti-uction in Divine truth, produced the natural result of 
 kindling a sense of personal responsibility in all who received 
 it, and of emancipating the manhood of the country from the 
 bondage of blind obedience to priest or baron. After the 
 religious revolution of 1560, when the country was covered 
 with evangelists, when the policy of the General Assembly 
 found living voice in every pulpit, and when the mind of the 
 leaders of the Church was expounded by every superintendent, 
 minister, and reader, in all corners of the land, there came a 
 mighty stirring of the slumbering masses. Men commenced to 
 think for themselves, and to recognise their responsibility to 
 God as members of the commonwealth. Conviction grew into 
 devotion, and the Scotch small proprietors, burghers, artisans, 
 and peasantry, beginning to breathe somewhat of the indomi- 
 table spirit which afterwards secured the freedom of their 
 country and their faith, now grew into a powerful middle class 
 — firm through conviction. ' It was not for nothing,' says 
 Mr Froude, 'that John Knox had for ten years preached in 
 Edinburgh, and his words been echoed from a thousand pulpits. 
 Elsewhere the plebeian element of nations had risen to power 
 through the arts and industries which make men rich — the 
 commons of Scotland were sons of their religion. While the 
 nobles were splitting into factions, chasing their small ambi- 
 tions, taking security for their fortunes, or entangling them- 
 selves in political intrigues, tradesmen, mechanics, and poor 
 tillers of the soil had sprung suddenly up into consciousness, 
 with spiritual convictions for which they were prepared to 
 live or die. The fear of God in them left no room for the 
 fear of any other thing, and in the very fierce intolerance 
 which John Knox had poured into their convictions, they had 
 
The Reformation, 151 
 
 become a force in the State. The poor clay, which a genera- 
 tion earher the haughty barons would have trodden into slime, 
 had been heated in the red-hot furnace of the new faith 
 .... Scotch Protestantism was shaped by Knox into a creed 
 for the people ; a creed in which the Ten Commandments were 
 of more importance than science, and the Bible than all the 
 literature in the world ; narrow, fierce, defiant, but hard and 
 strong as steel.' The middle class which John Knox was 
 inspiring with his own convictions, was the beginning of that 
 Scotch people to whom we belong. The Scotch people have 
 grown with the Scotch Church. The Church has been the pal- 
 ladium of popular liberty, the mother of education, the trainer 
 of the people in truthfulness and in an independence regulated 
 by a supreme loyalty to the Word of God. 
 
 The work of Knox in Scotland was felt far beyond the 
 country in which he laboured. The entire population of 
 Scotland at that period was about the same as that of Glasgow 
 in the present day. But the victory of Protestantism in Scot- 
 land was more complete than in any other country in Europe," 
 except perhaps the Republic of Geneva. The German Pro- 
 testant States were as yet part of the Catholic Empire; the 
 Protestants of Holland and the Netherlands were struggling 
 to relax the grasp with which Spain was attempting to 
 strangle their new beliefs; the policy of England was hesi- 
 tating ; but Scotland at one stride had passed out of the 
 most corrupt ecclesiastical system in Europe into the purity of 
 the primitive faith. This had its influence on contemporary 
 history. It had a very marked influence then and afterwards 
 upon England, and many a despairing heart abroad got new 
 courage from the spectacle. But the political as well as 
 religious principles which were then expounded scattered a 
 seed which took root in other times and places. Cromwell, 
 the Puritans — maligned as they are by those who enjoy the 
 fruit of their struggles — the English Revolution of 1688, 
 the constitutional monarchy of the present day, and America 
 
152 Sf Giles' Lectu7'es. 
 
 as it now is, may trace the stream of their history to its 
 fountain-head in the victory of Knox over absolutism and in 
 the assertion of the supreme rule of Scripture. 
 
 The position of Knox and of the Reformation was long 
 critical, and the difficulties which had to be contended with 
 were enormous. Knox was well acquainted with the ceaseless 
 diplomacy and ' practices ' going on among the Catholic 
 powers for the extirpation of heresy, but he could not have 
 realised the danger in which his country more than once 
 stood. The perils to which the Church was exposed from 
 parties in Scotland were small compared with that which was 
 threatened by larger movements, which, if successful, would 
 have crushed liberty and religion from John o' Groat's to 
 the Land's End. 
 
 There were two occasions on which foreign intrigue so 
 supported the designs of Mary and the Catholic party in 
 England and Scotland as to bring affairs to the very edge of 
 a precipice over which Protestantism and liberty would have 
 been hurled, and on both of these occasions the danger 
 was averted by the occurrence of great crimes. Immediately 
 before the assassination of Darnley the train had been skilfully 
 laid for something being done ' for the restoration of the auld 
 religion,' as the Queen herself confessed in her letter to Arch- 
 bishop Beaton, her ambassador at Paris. We cannot here 
 describe the particular steps which had prepared the possibility 
 of her success. Point after point had been gradually reached, 
 until the goal of her ambition was all but attained. Such of 
 the Scotch Lords as had been the very soul of the Reforma- 
 tion were in banishment, and their estates were about to be 
 confiscated ; the power of the sword was for the first time in her 
 hand ; she had been able to restore the Bishops to their seats in 
 Parliament ; several powerful nobles had returned to the old 
 faith ; the mass was being celebrated with startling freedom, 
 and friars were preaching in Holyrood ; it was even said 
 that new altars were ready to be placed in St Giles'. But at the 
 
The Reformation. 153 
 
 very moment when the plot had reached its crisis, Rizzio was 
 assassinated, and the kingdom thrown into confusion. Had the 
 Queen possessed the skill to have used that crime to her 
 advantage, it might have been the means of strengthening her 
 throne and of advancing her designs. But Mary could not for- 
 give the outrage she had sustained at the hands of her husband, 
 and her mad attachment to Bothwell, followed by the atrocity 
 of Kirk-o'-Field, her subsequent reckless bearing, and her 
 surrender at Carberry, led first to her compulsory resignation, 
 and finally to her imprisonment in England. She was branded 
 by the populace as an adulteress and murderess, and as far 
 as the commons of Scotland were concerned, her influence 
 sank with her reputation. The Reformation passed safely 
 through its first great peril, and the Regency of Moray for a 
 time gave security and the formal sanction of the crown to 
 the Church as restored to purity. 
 
 Even the partisans of Mary, shocked by her follies, if not 
 her complicity in the actual murder of Darnley, for a time 
 abandoned their plots in her favour. But it was only for a 
 brief time. Fotheringay, with its fair prisoner, soon became 
 the centre of new ' practices.' Conspirators were busy among 
 the English Catholics, and Spain once more took up the thread 
 and began to spin new combinations for the overthrow of 
 Elizabeth and the establishment of Romanism under Mary. 
 She was to marry Norfolk, and Norfolk was to lead the 
 Catholics of England to her side. Scotland became broken up 
 into contending factions. The Queen found the ablest of all 
 her counsellors in Maitland of Lethington, and he ' practised ' 
 with such effect among the nobles — who for different reasons, 
 chiefly selfish, were jealous of the Regency — that a strong force 
 was organised for the maintenance of her cause. Kirkaldy of 
 Grange held Edinburgh Castle in her name. Dumbarton 
 Castle, until taken by the extraordinary daring of Crawford of 
 Jordanhill, protected her interests in the West. The Hamiltons, 
 Buccleuch, Fernihirst, the reivers of the Border, Huntly, and 
 
154 "S*/ Gile£ Lectures. 
 
 the men of Aberdeenshire and the North-east, espoused her 
 cause. The country was for a tune steeped in bloodshed. Money 
 was freely poured into Scotland — now from France, and now 
 from Spain — and used according to the policy of the moment. 
 As the plot thickened, darker measures were projected. The 
 Spanish Armada was to be anticipated. Plans were laid for 
 the reception of a Spanish force, which the Duke of Alva was 
 to land in Aberdeenshire. Had it not been for Knox and the 
 men from Angus to the Lothians, from St Andrews to Glasgow 
 and Galloway, who would have died for their religion, Maitland 
 might possibly have secured the country. Alva was, as usual, 
 dilatory. He perhaps recognised the difficulties which the 
 firmness of the Reformers presented to the success of his 
 project, but delay he did until the second great crime 
 occurred in the Massacre of St Bartholomew, which blasted 
 for ever the hopes of Mary and of Romanism in the kingdom. 
 
 Knox was indeed ' inflexible,' as Lethington wrote to the 
 Queen. Although shattered in body through a stroke of 
 apoplexy — having 'tacken gude nicht of this world,' and 
 ' creiping upon his club ' as he went to the kirk-session in 
 St Giles' — yet the unquenchable fire flamed into its old strength 
 as it was stirred by the treachery and danger he beheld on 
 every side. For years the minister of this same church 
 of St Giles — then the only church in Edinburgh — he had 
 preached in it twice every Sunday, and thrice during week- 
 days. It was here that in the ears of lords and courtiers the 
 impassioned preacher rang out the brave words that shaped the 
 policy of the time. It was of his pulpit in this church he 
 said : ' I am in the place where I must speak the truth, and the 
 truth I will speak, impugn it who so list.' We cannot look 
 round on these walls without seeing them repeopled with the 
 men whose names still live — the young Lord James, the subtle 
 Lethington, the wretched Darnley, the rough Bothwell, or the 
 fierce Huntly drawing back with a scowl and ' tugging his 
 bonnet over his eyes ' as he winced under the fervid denuncia- 
 
The Reformation. 155 
 
 tions. It was here that the dark crowd of three thousand men 
 gathered to listen to the funeral sermon over the dead Regent 
 of happy memory. And now Knox, struggling with weakness, 
 strove as of old to warn friends and foes. Edinburgh was 
 then as a beleaguered city, and he was in the midst of danger. 
 The roar of cannon disturbed the midnight as well as the day. 
 The retainers of the Hamiltons, who bore him no good-will, 
 might at any time stab him as they jostled along the causeway. 
 A gun-shot came crashing into his room as he sat in his 
 house down there in the Canongate. Kirkaldy of Grange did 
 his best to protect him. His friends offered to form a body- 
 guard for his defence ; and chiefly to save them the risk of 
 injury, he yielded to their petitions and went for a time to St 
 Andrews — the city to him of so many memories. After he left 
 Edinburgh (May 157 1), it was for a time given up to the con- 
 flict between the castle and the supporters of the king. The 
 Church was closed. Cannon were mounted on St Giles' 
 steeple, and nothing was heard but the ' ringing of artillery.' 
 
 We cannot forbear giving here the well-known and graphic 
 picture which James Melville, then a young student, draws of 
 Knox's appearance when in St Andrews : ' I heard him teache ' 
 there the prophecies of Daniel, that simmer, and the wintar 
 following. I haid my pen, and my litle buike, and tuk away 
 sic things as I could comprehend. In the opening up of his 
 text, he was moderat the space of half an houre ; but when he 
 enterit to application, he made me so to greiu, and tremble, that 
 I could not hald a pen to wryt. ... I saw him, euerie day of 
 his doctrine, go hulie and fear, with a furring of marticks about 
 his neck, a staff" in the an hand, and gud godlie Richart Ballan- 
 den, his servand, balding up the uther oxter, from the Abbey to 
 the parish kirk, and be the said Richart, and another servant, 
 lifted up to the pulpit, whar he behovit to lean, at his first entrie; 
 bot, er he haid done with his sermone, he was sae active and 
 vigorous, that he was lyk to ding the pulpit in blads and flie 
 out of it. . . , Mr Knox wald sum tyme com in and 
 
156 Sf Gt/es' Lectures. 
 
 repose him in our college yeard, and call ws schollars unto 
 him, and bless ws, and exhort ws to knaw God and his wark in 
 our contrey, and stand be the guid cause, to use our tyme weill, 
 and lern the guid instiTJctiones, and follow the guid exemple of 
 our maisters.' 
 
 While in St Andrews, events were hurrying on which gave 
 Knox the greatest anxiety. The dangers from without were only 
 a little worse than those from within the Church. The Regent 
 Morton, who was the embodiment of the grasping spirit of the 
 Scottish nobility, had managed, partly by threats and partly 
 by reasoning, to jDcrsuade the Church to restore the bishops. 
 Some of the reasons for such a step were at the time obvious. 
 The loss of the spiritual estate in parliament would have 
 destroyed the balance of power and implied a serious revolu- 
 tion in the Constitution. Although it should be only in name, 
 the seats vacated by the bishops and abbots must be filled up. 
 There were other causes less honourable. The restoration of 
 the old ecclesiastics, or rather the institution of ' Tulchan ' 
 bishops and abbots, was a device whereby the barons might 
 more securely drain the Church of its property. This event, 
 however, properly falls to be discussed by my successor. 
 Knox made no formal protest to the Assembly against their 
 appointment, although in his public preaching and in private 
 conversation he ' discharged his conscience that the Kirk of Scot- 
 land should not be subject to that order.' He tried, however, 
 to secure the arrangement from some of the evils he suspected 
 would arise, for he counselled the Assembly to take order that 
 the bishops should account to the Church and not to the 
 nobles for the revenue of their dioceses, and earnestly warned 
 them against the sin of themselves entering into simoniacal 
 compacts. Had his counsels been acted upon, many a future 
 scandal and trouble would have been saved. 
 
 Knox felt that his time on earth was short. A truce between 
 the contending factions, accompanied by an earnest request by 
 the people of Edinburgh for his return, brought him back once 
 
The Reformation. 157 
 
 more to his old charge. He was too feeble to make his voice 
 heard in the Cathedral Church, and a smaller place was 
 appointed for his services. His sermon at the induction of his 
 colleague Lawson was the last he ever preached. 
 
 Scarcely had he returned to Edinburgh before the country 
 was startled with horror by the intelligence of the Massacre of 
 St Bartholomew. ' At first, it was the news of the assassination 
 of Coligny which arrived ; but post followed post, bringing fresh 
 accounts of the most shocking and barbarous cruelties. It is 
 believed that seventy thousand persons were murdered in one 
 week. For several days the streets of Paris literally ran with 
 blood.' When the tidings of this horrible butchery (for which 
 a solemn procession to be made to the church of St Louis, the 
 patron saint of France, a Te Deiim to be sung, and a year of 
 jubilee to be observed, were ordered by the Pope) reached 
 Scotland, the effect was profound and universal. John Knox 
 and the Reformers, many of whose personal friends were 
 among the victims, were appalled. All parties in the state 
 were horrified. Those who had hitherto supported the Queen, 
 felt now that her cause was doomed. The wavering Eliza- 
 beth of England was startled from her trickeries. Kirkaldy 
 and Lethington still held out in the castle, but they knew that 
 their days were numbered. Lethington indeed was dying. 
 For months he had been a living miracle, for never did 
 keen intellect consort so strangely with an exhausted frame. 
 The two men, dying within so short a distance of each other, 
 who had once been friends, were now separated by greater 
 differences than political feuds. ' Never,' wrote the English 
 Randolph, after visiting Maitland in the castle, ' have I found 
 in so weak a body, a mind less mindful to God, or more un- 
 natural to his country.' Unable to bear the noise of the guns, 
 he, with his little lapdog, was carried down to one of the 
 cellars ; and eleven days after the castle was taken, he died, it 
 was supposed by poison administered by his own hand. 
 
 The Massacre of St Bartholomew, which was intended to 
 
158 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 crush Protestantism in France, saved Protestantism to Scotland 
 and England. As the murder of Darnley five years before occa- 
 sioned a reaction of horror which frustrated the plans of Mary 
 and her foreign advisers, and by placing Moray in power, led to 
 the recognition of the Reformation as the religion of the State, 
 so now the crime of the Medici destroyed for ever the influence 
 of Mary and Romanism in Scotland. In less than a year 
 Edinburgh Castle fell, and the brave Kirkaldy, reconciled to his 
 old friends, died on the scaffold under circumstances of weird 
 interest. 
 
 But long before the taking of the castle John Knox entered 
 into his rest. For months before the end came, almost every 
 letter he wrote bore touching proof of his weariness of life and 
 his desire to depart. ' John Knox with my dead hand and 
 glad heart preising God.' 'Wearie of this world and thirsting 
 to depart.' ' Call for me, deir brethern, that God in his mercy 
 will pleis put an end to my long and painful battell. For now 
 being unable to fight as God sometimes gave me strenth I thrist 
 an end, befoir I be moir troublesum to the faithful ; and yet 
 Lord let my desyre be moderat be the Holy Spirit.' These 
 and such-like are the expressions which occur frequently in his 
 writings at this time. 
 
 There are few more touching records than the account of his 
 last hours, preserved by his faithful servant Richard Bannatyne. 
 The simple pathos of the narrative reveals the personal and 
 tender affection which Knox inspired in those who knew him — 
 an affection of which we have many incidental notices, disprov- 
 ing the popular belief that he was distinguished by a harsh and 
 repulsive nature. On the Tuesday after he preached his last 
 sermon at the induction of Lawson, ' he was stricken,' writes 
 Bannatyne, ' with a grit hoist,' which so enfeebled him, that he 
 had to leave off his ordinary reading of the Bible ; * for ilk 
 day he red a certane chepteris, both of the Auld Testament 
 and of the New, with certane psalmes, quhilk psalmes he 
 passed through euerie moneth once.' . . . 'The Friday, which 
 
77/1? Reformation. 159 
 
 was the 14 day, he rose above his accustomed dyet; and yit 
 when he did ryse, he could scairse sit in a stuile : and then 
 being demandit what he wald doe up ? said, he wald goe to the 
 Kirke and preich, for he thocht it had been Sonday ; and said 
 that he had been all nicht meditating upoun the resurrectione 
 of Christ, which he sould haue preichit after the death of 
 Christ, whilk he had finishit in his last sermonde the Sonday 
 befoir; for oft and monie tymes he wishit — and desyred of 
 God that he mycht end his dayis in the teiching and medita- 
 tioune of that doctrine, quhilk he did.' ... ' On Sonday, the 
 16 day, he kept his bed and would not eat,' having mistaken it 
 ' for the first Sonday of the Fast,' on account of the Massacre of 
 St Bartholomew. 
 
 ' Upoun Fryday, the xxi day, he commandit Richard to gar 
 make his kist (coffin) whairin he was borne to his burial. Sonday, 
 tlie 23 day (which was the first Sonday of the Fast), at efter- 
 noune, all being at the kirke except thame that waited upoun 
 him. . . . He said the Lordis Prayer, and the Beleife, with 
 some paraphraise, upon euerie petitione and article of thaim ; 
 and in saying " Our Father which art in heaven," he says, 
 " Who can pronounce so holie wordis ? " . . . He wald oftin 
 burst furth, " Live in Christ ! " and " Lord grant us the rycht 
 and perfyte hatred of syn, alsweill be the document of thy 
 mercies as of thy judgmentis." "Lord grant trew pastoris 
 to thy Kirke, that puritie of doctrine may be reteaned." 
 ... A litill efter no-ne, he caused his wyfe reid the 15 
 Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthianis off the resur- 
 rectione. A litill efter he sayes, " Now, for the last, I commend 
 my saule, spreit, and bodie (pointing upoun his thrie fingeris) 
 unto thy handis, O Lord ! " Thaireftir, about fyve houris, he 
 sayis to his wyfe, "'Goe reid whair I cast my first ancre ! " And 
 so shee read the 1 7 of Johnes Evangle ; quhilk being endit, was 
 red some of Calvinis Sermondis upon the Ephesianis. We, 
 thinking that he was a sleip, demandit gif he heard ? Answerit, 
 " I heir, and understandis far better, I praise God." . . . Half 
 
[6o S^ ales' Lectures. 
 
 ane hoiire eftir ten, or thairby, we went to our ordinar prayeris 
 (whilk was the longer or we went to thame, becaus we thocht 
 he had bene sleipand) ; quhilk being endit, , . . Robert Camp- 
 bell sittis downe befoir him on a stule ; and suddanlie thair- 
 efter he sayis, " Now it is cum ! " for he had gevin ane long siche 
 and sobe. Then Richard sitting doun before him, said, " Now, 
 sir, the tyme that ye have long callit to God for, to wit, ane end 
 of your battell, is cum ! And seeing all naturall power now 
 failes, remember upon these comfortable promises, which often 
 tymes ye have schawin to us of our Salviore Jesus Christ ! and 
 that ye may understand and know that ye heir us, make us 
 some signe." And so he lifted up his one hand, and incon- 
 tinent thairefter randerit the spreit, and sleipit away Avithout 
 ony paine, the day afoir said, about ellevin houris at evin.' 
 
 In this manner died John Knox on the 25th November 
 1572. Within a few yards of this place where we are now met, 
 he lies buried in that grave over which it is reported that the 
 Regent Morton pronounced the well-known and well-deserved 
 eulogium : ' There lies one who never feared the face of mortal 
 man.' 
 
 ' It seems to me hard measure,' says Thomas Carlyle, ' that 
 this Scottish man, now after three hundred years, should have 
 to plead like a culprit before the world : intrinsically for having 
 been, in such way as it was then possible to be, the bravest of 
 all Scotchmen ! . . . He is the one Scotchman to whom of 
 all others his country and the world owe a debt. He has to 
 plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to 
 it any million " unblamable " Scotchmen who need no forgive- 
 ness.' 
 
 ' What I have been to my countrie,' wrote Knox himself, 
 'albeit this unthankful aige will not knowe, yet the aiges to 
 come will beir witness to the treuth.' It will be our shame, and 
 the shame of Scotland, if that confidence is not justified. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 EPISCOPACY, PRESBYTERY, AND PURITANISM IN 
 SCOTLAND, 1572 TO 1660 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. John Cunningham, D.D., Minister of Crieff. 
 
 nPHE sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were times of 
 -*■ fierce religious conflict. In the period immediately 
 preceding 1572, the struggle was between old Romanism and 
 nascent Protestantism. In the period following 1572, and 
 stretching on to the very close of the next century, the struggle 
 was between Presbyterianism and Prelacy. The first of these 
 conflicts was short, sharp, and decisive. The second was 
 protracted and indecisive, and, like a slow fever, simply kept 
 the country in a state of continual unrest. 
 
 In 1572, when my lecture begins, Scotland was in as chaotic 
 a state, socially, politically, and ecclesiastically, as it well could 
 be. The king was a boy of six years old. The deposed 
 Queen-Mother was a captive in England. The government 
 was in the hands of a Regency ; but the first Regent, the Earl 
 of Moray, had been shot on the streets of Linlithgow in 1570 ; 
 the second, the Earl of Lennox, was killed, in what we would 
 
 K 
 
i62 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 now call a coup d'etat, at Stirling in 1 5 7 1 ; the third, the Earl 
 of Mar, died in 1572 ; and before the close of the same year, 
 the fourth and last, the Earl of Morton, occupied the danger- 
 ous pre-eminence, and ruled for a time with a rod of iron ; but 
 in the end he was more unfortunate than all his predecessors, 
 for he died a traitor's death. In 1572 there had been four 
 regents in little more than two years, recalling the time when 
 Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian successively wore the 
 Roman purple in a similarly short period. 
 
 The Reformation may be said to have been now legally com- 
 pleted, for the Regent Moray had given as much legal validity 
 as he could to the new Church : the Confession of Knox was 
 the Confession of the Nation ; and to say a mass was death. 
 But a relapse was possible — even probable. Men are not able 
 all at once to tear out of their hearts religious ideas deeply 
 rooted there — above all, women are not able to do so ; and we 
 may be quite sure the women of the Reformation Period had 
 still a strong hankering after their priests, their masses, their 
 confessionals, their indulgences, and their religious processions. 
 The great wave which had surged over the country had swept 
 them out of the ancient Church ; but there were thousands who 
 had been carried out in the crowd almost against their will ; 
 and another wave, if the tide began to recede, might wash them 
 back again. Everybody recognised the possibility of this. 
 The Guisian relatives of Queen Mary plotted for it ; and the 
 diplomatists of Queen Elizabeth plotted against it. 
 
 Though the practice of the old religion had been declared 
 to be illegal, the framework of the old Church remained almost 
 entire. Most of the abbeys had been wrecked, most of the 
 cathedrals sadly defaced, and all the parish churches purged 
 of their images ; but otherwise the face of things remained 
 much as before. The bishops were still drawing two-thirds of 
 their revenues ; the parsons were still living in their manses, 
 and in large districts of the country, more especially in the 
 northern and south-western counties, keeping possession of the 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 163 
 
 churches and barring them against the Protestant preachers. 
 The Church of which the foundations had been laid by Queen 
 Margaret, and which had been defended to the last extremity 
 by Cardinal Beaton, was now like a useless shell lying on the 
 beach, almost entire, and outwardly as beautiful as ever, but 
 with all its inner life gone. 
 
 But what was to be done with the Church's rentals and teinds 
 as the bishops, abbots, and parsons died out ? The Reformed 
 clergy had claimed these as their inheritance, but the lords and 
 lairds had destined at least a considerable portion of them for 
 themselves. It must be told that there were many among the 
 Lords of the Congregation who hungered and thirsted more 
 after the corn-fields of the monks than after righteousness. But 
 however this may be, as the law stood, it was only bishops who 
 could draw the episcopal revenues — only abbots who could lift 
 the rents of the abbey lands. To the lay mind, it seemed 
 that to destroy these orders, was to disturb the balance of the 
 Constitution, by removing the Third Estate, and to annihilate 
 the tenure by which a great deal of the property of the kingdom 
 was held. This feeling lay at the bottom of the arrangement so 
 well known in Scotch ecclesiastical history as the Concordat 
 of Leith. According to this Concordat, concluded between the 
 Church and the State on the ist of February 1572, Archbishops 
 and Bishops, Abbots and Priors, were to be continued as parts 
 of the Spiritual Estate, but with restricted powers, and subject 
 to the jurisdiction of the General Assembly. This compromise 
 being made, the vacant bishoprics were soon filled ; but it was 
 everywhere whispered that the patrons had bargained with the 
 presentees that a portion of the episcopal revenues was to be 
 handed over to them. This led to their being stigmatised as 
 Tulchan Bishops — they were no better than stuffed calves set 
 up to make the cow give her milk. 
 
 Such was the state of the country and the Church when 
 Andrew Melville returned home after a residence of many 
 years at the universities of Paris, Poitiers, and Geneva. He 
 
164 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 had already a great reputation as a learned man ; he had been 
 the intimate friend of Theodore Beza, the successor of Calvin, 
 not only at Geneva, but in the Reformed Churches everywhere; 
 and Glasgow was fortunate in securing him as the Principal 
 of her University. Here he taught not only Divinity and 
 Oriental languages, but Greek, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, 
 Geometry, Aristotle's Ethics, Politics and Physics, and Plato's 
 Dialogues — a whole Senatus Academicus in himself. Students 
 came in such numbers that his class-room was crowded. 
 
 Melville came to Scotland with strong Genevese pro- 
 clivities, and it was not long till he threw down the gage 
 to the Episcopal party in the Church. The battle began in 
 the Assembly of 1575, and here he obtained his first victory 
 from his accurate knowledge of his Greek Testament. The 
 Assembly declared that the name ' bishop ' properly belonged 
 to all who had charge of a flock ; and all scholars are now 
 agreed that, according to Apostolic usage, the Assembly was 
 right. But Melville was not content with this. In 1578 he 
 pushed his advantage further, and in 1580 he obtained his 
 crowning victory. The Assembly then unanimously declared 
 the office of a diocesan bishop to be * unlawful, and with- 
 out warrant in the Word of God,' and called upon those who 
 held the office forthwith to demit it. It was a wonderful 
 triumph to be obtained so quickly by one man against the 
 influence of the Regent, the simoniacal nobility, and the bishops 
 whom they had set up. 
 
 Looking back upon it now, after three centuries, is it a 
 triumph of which we should be glad, or which we must regret ? 
 It is tolerably certain that if the dignities and offices of the 
 old Church had remained, the greater part of the wealth of 
 the old Church must have remained with them. By their 
 abolition it was lost. It is also certain that the country would 
 have been saved the convulsions and throes through which it 
 had to pass in the next hundred years. Moreover, thus early, 
 before Presbyterianism was distinctly stamped upon the Scottish 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Purita?iism in Scotland. 1 65 
 
 Church, that religious uniformity between England and Scot- 
 land would have been secured which many thoughtful men in 
 all the centuries have earnestly wished to see, and which many 
 thoughtful men even still would sacrifice much to realise. To 
 those who regard all forms of Church polity as indifferent — and 
 these in Scotland are now a large class — it may seem that 
 Scotland has paid too high a price for the discovery that 
 diocesan bishops were unknown in the Apostolic Church. 
 We have lost our episcopal revenues and our abbey lands ; the 
 clergy have lost their places in Parliament and on the bench ; 
 the country has come through agonies of which the traces 
 still remain ; and England and Scotland, long united politically, 
 are still divided ecclesiastically. All this has come of Melville's 
 victory. 
 
 Such is one aspect of the question. But there is another 
 aspect which we must also look at. The Presbyterian Church 
 was the home of freedom and independent thought all through 
 the seventeenth century — on two different occasions it was 
 their last asylum when they had been driven out everywhere 
 else. From it there issued the forces which established the 
 Commonwealth and afterwards led to the Revolution ; and it is 
 questionable if there had been Commonwealth or Revolution 
 without it. Without it the Stuarts might have been still upon 
 the throne, doing as the Stuarts always liked to do. One 
 Church might have been established over all the island, undis- 
 turbed by the muttering of dissent, but dead, stagnant, with no 
 breath of God blowing over it ; and Great Britain been as king- 
 ridden and priest-ridden as Spain, Unless, perchance, the 
 revolutionary fiends, held back for more than a century, and 
 breaking out with all the more fury because of it, swept away 
 both Monarchy and Church — as happened in France — reading 
 to all Churches and nations a salutary lesson for all time. I am 
 inclined, then, to think that after all we did not pay too high a 
 price for our Presbytery, though it cost the clergy their dignities 
 and lands, and the country some bloody agonies. 
 
1 66 Si Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Having swept away the Episcopal polity so far as an Act of 
 Assembly could do it, Melville and his party set themselves to 
 build up the Presbyterian. The Second Book of Discipline 
 was compiled and approved of by the Church. It is curious 
 that in this famous constitutional document only four ecclesias- 
 tical assemblies are mentioned — the CEcumenical, the National, 
 the Provincial, and the Congregational. The Q^lcumenical was 
 never realised till the Pan-Presbyterian Council met in Edin- 
 burgh three years ago. The National is the General Assembly 
 which from that time till this, save in times of suppression, has 
 held its sittings annually. The Provincial is the Synod. The 
 Congregational Court or Eldership appears to agree in its main 
 features with the Kirk-session. But what of the Presbytery — 
 the most rudimental court of the Presbyterian Church ? It is 
 not once mentioned. The truth is, it was not yet clearly 
 conceived of as a court separate from the kirk-session. More 
 than one-half of the parishes were yet without regular ministers. 
 One minister, in many cases, dispensed the sacraments in four 
 or five different parishes, where there were only readers to read 
 the Book of Common Order on the Sundays. There was one 
 Eldership for such a group of congregations. But as the 
 parishes were gradually supplied with ministers, an ecclesiastical 
 development took place which resulted in every congregation 
 having its own kirk-session and every district its own Presbytery. 
 The original Eldership parted into two separate organisations. 
 
 Up to this time there had been no such thing as a Presbytery 
 in Scotland ; but even while the Second Book of Discipline was 
 being debated in the Assembly, Presbyteries were being consti- 
 tuted in different parts of the country. They at once attracted 
 the attention of the Court. Some of their moderators were sum- 
 moned before the Privy Council, jealous of this new ecclesi- 
 astical judicature, and ordered to produce their minutes. But 
 the work of constituting Presbyteries went on, and they soon 
 existed everywhere. As they increased, the occupation of the 
 Superintendent was gone. 
 
Episcopacy^ Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 167 
 
 The king was now a lad of fifteen, and a very precocious lad. 
 He had nominally at least assumed the reins of government. 
 Morton had laid down the regency, and soon afterwards was 
 compelled to lay down his neck under the knife of the Maiden ; 
 and his head now grinned from the highest gable of the 
 Tolbooth. Two gay young men had become the constant 
 companions of the king — Esme Stuart, generally known as 
 Mons. D'Aubigny ; and Captain James Stuart, a son of Lord 
 Ochiltree's. The first was a Frenchified cousin of the king ; the 
 second, a worse than Frenchified brother-in-law of John Knox — 
 a curious conjunction. The one soon became Duke of Lennox 
 and the other Earl of Arran, for James was prodigal of titles to 
 his favourites. These two ruled everything. The English 
 Court was alarmed, and so were the Scotch Presbyterian 
 ministers. And there was good cause. The bishops who had 
 not demitted their office, were maintained in their cathedrals 
 and dioceses in defiance of the mandates of the Church. It 
 was rumoured that Popery as well as Prelacy was about to be 
 re-introduced ; and the public recantation by D'Aubigny of his 
 popish errors, did not allay the panic. It was regarded as a 
 sham. The horrors of St Bartholomew's Day, still fresh in the 
 memory, intensified the feeling. It was at this crisis the Raid 
 of Ruthven took place. The royal lad was wheedled to Hunt- 
 ingtower, near Perth, and kept a virtual prisoner by the Earl of 
 Gowrie and other Presbyterian lords ; Lennox and Arran were 
 obliged to flee for their lives, and almost every pulpit in the 
 kingdom proclaimed the deliverance of the Kirk and the king 
 from the hands of their enemies. But it was a short-lived 
 jubilee. Within a year James managed to escape from his 
 keepers, and was soon surrounded by his old friends. The 
 Raid was declared to be treason. Most of the barons hastened 
 to make their submission, and were forgiven ; but not so the 
 ministers. Many of them still justified the deed in their 
 sermons, and foremost among these was Melville, who, with his 
 fierce elocution, told the king to be warned by the fearful 
 
1 68 5/ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 examples of Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar. He was sum- 
 moned before the Privy Council, but declined its jurisdiction, 
 and ventured to be contemptuous. Ordered to enter himself as 
 a prisoner at Blackness Castle, he thought it safer to cross the 
 Border and seek a refuge in Berwick. 
 
 It is certain that James had already contracted a dislike of 
 Presbytery ; and the Raid of Ruthven and the plain speaking 
 of the preachers had deepened the feeling. In 1584 the Acts 
 were passed by the Estates which are known in history as the 
 Black Acts. They ratified the jurisdiction of the Three Estates \ 
 they declared the king to be supreme in all causes and over all 
 persons ; they placed the chief ecclesiastical authority in the 
 hands of the bishops. These enactments struck at the root of 
 the most cherished principles of Presbytery. Some of the 
 ministers left the country ; the most of them sullenly submitted, 
 for what else could they do ? For eight years from this time 
 there was ecclesiastical chaos in Scotland — Episcopacy and 
 Presbytery jumbled confusedly together. 
 
 But strange to say, at the very time when the fortunes of 
 Presbytery were at the lowest ebb, an Act of Parliament was 
 passed, which made a well-endowed Episcopate for ever after 
 impossible in Scotland. In 1587 the Act of Annexation was 
 passed, which attached the temporalities of all benefices to the 
 crown. The teinds still remained sacred, but the lands were 
 secularised. It was the first direct act of disendowment con- 
 nected with the Reformation. If the rich estates which had 
 maintained the splendour of the Pre-Reformation bishops and 
 abbots, had remained with the crown, for national uses, we 
 might not so much have lamented it ; but many of them were 
 soon squandered by the prodigal James among his favourites, 
 and now they only increase the acreage of some of our great 
 proprietors. When the next act of disendowment comes, how 
 much of the teinds will go in the same way ? 
 
 During all this time Presbyterianism and Episcopacy were 
 struggling for supremacy, and now Presbyterianism managed 
 
episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 169 
 
 to throw its antagonist. But how, it is difficult to say. James 
 had got married to a Danish princess, and had been engaged in 
 drinking-bouts with the Danish nobles, forgetful of Episcopacy 
 and Presbytery alike. When the young husband returned, he 
 was immensely pleased with everything and with everybody, for 
 the Presbyterian ministers and people had given him a right 
 royal welcome. In the Assembly of 1590, he delivered his 
 celebrated speech. As Calderwood has it, ' he fell forth prais- 
 ing God that he was born in such a time as the time of the 
 light of the Gospel, to such a place as to be king in such a 
 Kirk, the sincerest Kirk in the world. The Kirk of Geneva,' 
 he continued, ' keepeth Pasche and Yule ; what have they for 
 them ? they have no institution. As for our neighbour Kirk in 
 England, it is an ill-said mass in English, wanting nothing but 
 the liftings. I charge you, my good people, ministers, doctors, 
 elders, nobles, gentlemen, and barons, to stand to your purity 3 
 and I forsooth, so long as I brook my life and crown, shall 
 maintain the same against all deadly.' This speech is very like 
 our Scotch King Solomon, and yet it is altogether unlike every- 
 thing else he ever said or did. It gives the lie to all his past 
 and all his future. But for the time being he was sincere. 
 Two years afterwards, in June 1592, the Act was passed which 
 is known as the Magna Charta of the Presbyterian Church in 
 Scotland. It annulled the Black Acts so far as they infringed 
 upon ecclesiastical jurisdiction in spiritual affairs ; it gave legal 
 sanction to the Presbyterian Courts, and provided that presen- 
 tations to benefices should henceforth be laid before the Presby- 
 teries, who were instructed to take the presentees on trial, and 
 give them collation should they be found qualified. This last 
 clause made the presbyters of those days to rejoice with exceed- 
 ing great joy, for it stripped the bishops of the most essential 
 attribute of their office, and gave it to the Presbyteries; and 
 yet, strange to say, it was this very clause which, in 1843, split 
 the Church asunder, from the Church's refusal to take on trial 
 the presentee to Auchterarder. It does not seem to have 
 
lyo Si Giles' Lectures. 
 
 occurred to Andrew Melville, stickler for spiritual jurisdiction 
 though he was, that it was wrong for the Parliament to impose 
 this upon the Church; it was rather a thing for which the 
 Church should be devoutly thankful; but the successors of 
 Andrew Melville, two hundred and fifty years afterwards, 
 thought differently, and read the clause as putting a yoke on 
 their necks, which they could not and would not bear. The 
 bishops who were dispossessed in 1592, were avenged in 1843. 
 
 In 1592 Presbytery was supreme, but it did not long main- 
 tain its supremacy. It abused its power. The king wished to 
 be lenient to some of his great nobles in the North who were 
 still attached to Popery. The ministers would have no mercy 
 upon them. They would confiscate their estates and drive 
 them into exile. The pulpit then performed the work which 
 the press has usurped now, and fierce philippics were pro- 
 nounced against the king and his courtiers. David Black, one 
 of the ministers of St Andrews, preached a sermon denouncing 
 king, queen, court, council, in language which would hardly 
 be used now by the most violent republican demagogue. He 
 was summoned before the Privy Council, but he declined its 
 jurisdiction. As the altar consecrated the gift, so, in those 
 high days, it was thought the pulpit sanctified every word that 
 was spoken in it, however libellous or treasonable it might be. 
 Notwithstanding his declinature, he was found guilty, and 
 banished north of the Tay ; for our Highland glens were 
 regarded then as Siberia is now among the Russians, or as 
 Botany Bay was lately among ourselves. But the matter did 
 not end here. The whole Church had been excited by the 
 trial, and the excitement culminated in a riot in Edinburgh, in 
 which James thought his royal life was endangered. He came 
 to the conclusion that Presbytery could not be bridled, and 
 that it must be destroyed. 
 
 He carried out his plans with considerable kingcraft. He 
 shifted the meeting-place of the Assembly from Edinburgh to 
 the North, where a love for Prelacy and even Popery still 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 171 
 
 lingered. Moreover, it was hoped die turbulent spirits of the 
 South and West would not travel so far — for a long journey it 
 then was. The first Assembly was held at Perth, but the king's 
 design was there veiled under general propositions. Soon 
 afterwards, another Assembly met at Dundee, and there a 
 standing Commission was appointed of some of the most 
 eminent and ambitious ministers of the Church — one of them 
 bearing the name and, I suppose, the blood of our present 
 Premier. In the month of December of that same year, 1597, 
 these Commissioners, who seem to have understood well the 
 part they were to play, appeared before the Estates, and craved 
 that some of their number should be admitted to Parliament 
 as the Third Estate. The crave was granted ; but it was pro- 
 vided that if they entered Parliament it must be as bishops, 
 abbots, or priors, as in the olden time. This was exactly what 
 was wanted, and indeed just what had been arranged. Again 
 an Assembly was summoned to meet at Dundee. The king 
 was present, and protested that he did not wish to see ' papist- 
 ical or Anglican bishops,' but only some of the wisest of the 
 ministers to sit in Parliament and Council, and ' not to be 
 standing as poor supplicants at the door.' The proposal 
 sounded well, and was carried, notwithstanding the resolute 
 opposition of some of the more sturdy Presbyterians. It was 
 remarked that it was the Northern ministers who had decided 
 the vote. Caithness and Orkney led the ring. The Southern 
 ministers bitterly complained of this, just as some people are 
 complaining at this present moment of the preponderating 
 vote of the North in a somewhat different matter. Thus had 
 James very dexterously managed to insert the thin edge of 
 Episcopacy into the Church. Of course, it was something for a 
 parish minister to sit in Parliament, and become a member 
 of the Privy Council, and a lord of Session. It was scarcely 
 in flesh and blood to resist these honours when they Avere 
 thrust upon them. How many of us would resist them now ? 
 And why then should we severely blame these ancient pres- 
 
1^2 St Giles' Lectures. 
 
 byters when their ambition had been stimulated and the 
 consciousness, of a ParUamentary power, to be still further 
 developed in their descendants, was already stirring their blood? 
 
 Five years after this, James succeeded to the throne of 
 Elizabeth ; and from being a petty king, brow-beat by his 
 clergy and intimidated by his nobles, he suddenly found him- 
 self the almost absolute monarch of a great kingdom. In 
 Church affairs he bad all along been influenced by Anglican 
 examples ; but now when he was surrounded by bishops and 
 deans, and felt the strength which his new position gave him, 
 he set himself with more earnestness than ever to the work of 
 religious uniformity. It was a natural and excusable ambition, 
 had he gone about the matter in a kindly and constitutional 
 way. But that was not James's way — especially now. He 
 dissolved Assemblies which he thought would be unruly ; and 
 cast the ministers, who met in spite of him, into jail. He 
 called other Assemblies, when and where he pleased, by his 
 own kingly prerogative, and packed them with his own 
 creatures. In this way the work was easily and effectually 
 done. In an Assembly which met at Glasgow in 1610, the 
 Presbyterian polity was pulled down, stone by stone, by the 
 hands of Presbyterian ministers, and the Episcopal polity set 
 up in its room. The Parliament had been still more prompt 
 than the Assembly. In 1606 it had repealed the Act of 
 Annexation so far as the episcopal lands were concerned, and 
 in 16 1 2 it gave full legal status to the episcopal order. 
 
 But could Parliament or General Assembly make bishops ? 
 Up to this time they had both made and unmade them. But 
 different ideas upon this point were now prevalent in England, 
 and James had inhaled these. Archbishop Bancroft had 
 bitterly attacked the Scotch Church, as an institution of 
 Genevese origin. It had no divine right, no apostolical suc- 
 cession. The Scotch ministers designated to the Episcopate 
 must therefore go to England and receive the Episcopal grace, 
 and through the Enghsh line of succession link themselves with 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 173 
 
 the Apostles. Spottisvvood, Lamb, and Hamilton went ; and 
 having been consecrated by the Bishops of London, Ely, and 
 Bath, they returned, bringing with them a true Church. Shall 
 we blame them for their subserviency ? Not much, for ' he 
 that desireth the office of a bishop, desireth a good thing;' and 
 we must remember that Anglican ideas were at that time telling 
 powerfully on the Scotch clergy through kingly and courtly 
 influences. Anglican influences are acting upon us now, and 
 they always will. 
 
 But what of that unflinching presbyter, Andrew Melville? 
 He was not a man to be bribed by mitres. He was not a 
 scholar to be daunted by Bancroft, albeit he was an Arch- 
 bishop. He had already pulled down a whole hierarchy ; and 
 when James, timid and testy, would not listen to him, he had 
 taken him by the sleeve and told him he was ' God's silly vassal.' 
 James knew he must either be won over or got rid of. He 
 was invited to the English court, and put through a course of 
 Episcopal divinity — a very farcical proceeding ; but it appears 
 to have done him harm rather than good. He amused him- 
 self with writing a Latin lampoon upon what he had seen in 
 the Chapel-Royal. It unfortunately found its way into the 
 king's hands, and the too witty presbyter was found guilty of 
 a misdemeanour by the Privy Council, and sent to the Tower. 
 There he lay for three years, when he was allowed to retire to 
 France and accept a professorship at Sedan, now famous for 
 the destruction of the French army and empire. He never 
 saw his native country more. That was the way in which 
 James used his invited guest — the ablest and honestest 
 ecclesiastic in his kingdom. 
 
 Melville is undoubtedly one of the most massive figures in 
 Scotch ecclesiastical history. In scholarship and manly grasp 
 of mind, he excelled Knox. In courage and disinterestedness, 
 he was equal to him. He was the great Northern apostle of 
 high Church principles — the Hildebrand of Presbytery. These 
 principles were not in much favour in England in those days, for 
 
174 "S*/ Giles' Lechtres. 
 
 Henry would have taken off the head and Elizabeth would 
 have torn off the frock of any priest who disputed the royal 
 authority ; and James, though not so violent in his way, had 
 quite as high conceptions of prerogative, in all causes, ecclesi- 
 astical as well as civil. But had Melville lived in our own 
 more tolerant day, he might have been hailed as the greatest 
 champion of the spiritual power on both sides of the Border. 
 
 The Church of Scotland was now Episcopal — more Episcopal 
 than it had ever been since the Reformation. But its worship 
 was somewhat balder and barer than in the sister Church. 
 There were no sacerdotal vestments, no choral singing, no 
 organs. James was determined there should be uniformity in 
 all things. In 1617 he revisited his native country after an 
 absence of thirteen years, and he took care that the service in 
 the chapel at Holyrood should be conducted with all the 
 splendour of the Anglican ritual. He explained to the bishops 
 and nobles his views as to the future worship of the Church, 
 told them he might make the changes by virtue of his own 
 royal prerogative ; but that out of deference to popular preju- 
 dices, he would leave it to the General Assembly. Next year, 
 16 18, the Assembly met at Perth, and a famous Assembly it 
 was. The Dean of Winchester brought before it Five Articles 
 which the ecclesiastical monarch had drawn up, and which he 
 wished the Assembly to pass into law. They were : (i) That 
 the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ should be 
 received kneeling ; (2) That it might be administered in private 
 to the sick ; (3) That infants might be baptised at home when 
 they could not conveniently be brought to church ; (4) That 
 all children of eight years of age, after having learned the Lord's 
 Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, should be 
 brought to the bishop to be blessed ; (5) That the days com- 
 memorative of Christ's birth, passion, resurrection, and ascen- 
 sion, and of the descent of the Holy Ghost, should be observed 
 as holidays. 
 
 These Five Articles would not stagger us very much now 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, attd Puritanism in Scotland. 1 7 5 
 
 unless, perchance, the first. Two or three of them are less or 
 more a part of our modern Presbyterian usage. But they did 
 stagger and distress our ancestors two hundred and sixty years 
 ago. They regarded the Articles as a reversion to Popery ; 
 and, moreover, they did not like to have them thus forced upon 
 them by the king. Nevertheless, they were passed by the 
 Assembly, for both bribery and intimidation were employed, 
 and the cringing courtiers outvoted the independent ministers. 
 But it was soon found that it was more easy to make such 
 regulations than to get people to keep them. Some kept 
 Christmas and Easter, others did not. Some ministers gave 
 the sacrament to kneeling communicants ; others adhered to 
 the old communion table, in scenic representation of the last 
 supper at Jerusalem. In many churches there were confusion 
 and distress from the conflict between the old forms and 
 the new. 
 
 So far as we can trace, the revolution which had set up 
 the hierarchy had never greatly stirred popular passion. The 
 jealousies and grudges, the ideas and arguments which it 
 evoked, had not penetrated much below the clergy and the 
 lairds. But these new questions about worship touched every 
 man, woman, and child. Those who did not care a straw 
 whether the ministers in the cathedral towns were called 
 presbyters or bishops — it was no matter of theirs — did care that 
 the worship to which they had been accustomed from their 
 infancy should not be disturbed by king or courtier. We know 
 what is happening in England at this day in many churches 
 where an elaborate Ritualism is being introduced — the heart- 
 burnings, the rioting, the appeals to the law-courts — and it may 
 help to illustrate the state of feeling in Scotland for years after 
 the Assembly of 1618. It was plain that a revolution of the 
 national worship was not to be effected so easily as had the 
 revolution of the Church's polity. 
 
 And yet, now in the nineteenth century, we feel it might be 
 possible to conform the worship of the Church of Scotland to 
 
176 S^ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 that of England ; but its polity — never. Not that we think 
 Presbytery divinely right and Episcopacy essentially wrong; 
 but because we think no form of Church government has a 
 prescriptive right, and that that form, be it Episcopal, Presby- 
 terian, or Congregational, is the divinest and the best which 
 works the best. We can never now belie our history by sur- 
 rendering our Presbyterianism, or renounce our reason by 
 believing that religion depends upon a trinity of Orders. 
 
 In 1625 James died — not much lamented in his native 
 country. He was succeeded by his son Charles I., a man of 
 graver manners, and greater earnestness, but bigoted and 
 obstinate in the last degree. From this time on till 1633 the 
 history of the Scotch Church is a dead flat, with no incidents 
 of much interest rising above the ordinary level. In 1633 
 Charles came to Scotland to be crowned with the crown of his 
 ancestors. He was accompanied by William Laud, then Bishop 
 of London, and on the fair way to be Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 On Sunday the 23d of June he came to this church (St Giles') 
 to worship, but the ordinary officials were hustled out of their 
 places; two English chaplains, in surplices, read the lessons 
 and the prayers; and the Bishop of Moray, also in a surplice, 
 preached the sermon. How different from this the conduct of 
 our gracious Queen, when she goes to the humble church of 
 Crathie, and joins in its worship according to the usual simple 
 ritual of the country ! 
 
 Charles was not idle while in Edinburgh, for he had resolved 
 on a great deal of legislation, some of it of rather an explosive 
 kind. An act which continued to him the paternal tailoring 
 prerogative of prescribing vestments for the clergy, excited 
 violent opposition. Curious that clerical costumes should have 
 excited such agitations in all ages and all churches. But if 
 Carlyle and other philosophers who have written about clothes, 
 be right, perhaps chasubles, albs, stoles, birettas, hoods, capes 
 are worth all the commotion they have caused. 
 
 There was another matter which caused still greater alarm in 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanistn in Scotlajid. 177 
 
 a different quarter : the king had set his heart on recovering the 
 Church lands and tithes, more especially those granted during 
 his father's minority, but found he had undertaken an impos- 
 sible task. The possessors held on to them with a death-grip ; 
 but they were greatly alarmed, as they well might. He had, 
 however, devised the scheme by which the stipends of the clergy 
 are still paid out of the teinds of their parishes, and the 
 Parliament of 1633 gave it its sanction. It was at the time a 
 great improvement upon the older methods, and so far the 
 Church is Charles' debtor ; but as it made the valuation of 
 land at that time the valuation for all time, although the real 
 value might have increased twenty-fold, it owes him no thanks. 
 Every one is now crying out for a change in the teind laws. 
 
 Another good thing he did — he laid in that parliament one of 
 the chief foundation-stones of our parochial school system. 
 
 There was another thing he did ; and I suppose that in this 
 building, I must say it was a good thing too. He erected 
 Edinburgh into a bishopric, for, strange to say, while such 
 paltry towns as Dunkeld and Dunblane were bishops' seats, 
 the metropolis, up to that day, was not. As the bishop must 
 have a cathedral, the Collegiate Church of St Giles was by 
 royal charter erected into the Cathedral Church of the diocese, 
 with all the rights, liberties, and immunities belonging to a 
 cathedral. There was still another thing which I suppose I 
 must also say was good, though the Presbyterian writers of the 
 time are against me. ' He did cause demolish the partition 
 wall betwixt the Great and Little Kirk. Neither ministers 
 nor magistrates in Edinburgh,' said honest Row the historian, 
 ' did shew tokens of grief or sorrow for this ; but many good 
 Christians, both in Edinburgh and the country, did heavily 
 complain of it to God, knowing it to be an evident beginning 
 of a huge desolation to come, for Edinburgh had too few 
 kirks before, and now this was unfitter for hearing nor it was 
 before.' But more than this. In order that the new cathedral 
 might be made in every way worthy of its position, the Town 
 
178 Si ales' Lectures. 
 
 Council despatched the Dean to Durham, to sketch the choir of 
 the cathedral there ; but before these plans were carried out the 
 country was in confusion ; and it has been reserved for Dr 
 Chambers to restore this noble church to its pre-Reformation 
 beauty. 
 
 But another matter was arranged during the royal visit which 
 led to much more important results than all the others. The 
 Scotch bishops were instructed to prepare a Liturgy, after the 
 model of the Anglican one, and transmit it to London for 
 revisal. It was this which had brought William Laud to 
 Scotland. 
 
 No student of Scotch history now makes the mistake of sup- 
 posing that up to this time there was no Liturgy in the Scotch 
 Church. Knox's Book of Commofi Order had been in ordinary 
 use from the Reformation down to the time we speak of. It was 
 read every Sunday morning by the Reader in this church, and 
 in almost every other church in the kingdom ; only the rubric 
 gave -the officiating clergyman liberty to diverge from it. There 
 was, therefore, no national prejudice against a liturgical service ; 
 but there was a nervous dread of Popery, and a nervous dread 
 that the national usages were to be abolished, and Anglican ones 
 substituted in their stead, without the sanction of Parliament 
 or Assembly, and simply by a stretch of the royal prerogative. 
 The old stubborn spirit of independence — bred in the bone 
 and hardened by the wars of Wallace and Bruce — could not 
 stand that. 
 
 It was July 1637 before the Prayer-book was prepared and 
 revised, and all the arrangements made for its introduction. 
 But on the 23d of that month it was to be used for the first 
 time in this church. At ten o'clock, the dean, in his surplice, 
 entered the reading-desk, but he had scarcely begun to read 
 when the congregation was in a state of wild uproar. The 
 storm which had been slowly gathering since 161 8 now burst 
 out. 'They are bringing in Popery,' shouted some. 'Woe, 
 woe ! ' cried others. The shrill voices of women were upper- 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 179 
 
 most. The half-mythical, half-historical Jenny Geddes hurled 
 the stool upon which she had been sitting at the dean's head, 
 screaming : ' Fause loon, dost thou say mass at my lug ? ' 
 Other missiles of a similar character went hurtling through 
 the air. Spottiswood, the Archbishop of St Andrews, who 
 was present, and Forbes, the new Bishop of Edinburgh, 
 tried to appease the people, but they only made matters 
 worse. At length the magistrates managed to eject the 
 principal rioters ; and Forbes preached a short sermon, with 
 closed doors, and amid comparative quietness. But when 
 the church dignitaries came out to the street, they were 
 mobbed by the people, hooted, hustled, stoned, and glad 
 to escape with their lives. Sitting where you are, you must 
 have a dull imagination if you cannot realise the whole scene 
 as if it were happening before your eyes. 
 
 This riot was the spark which set the whole country in a 
 blaze, and indeed kindled the civil war in England as well as 
 Scotland. Knowing what they had to fear, the people began 
 to organise themselves for defence. The Tables were formed ; 
 these being, in fact, four Committees representative of the 
 Nobles, the Gentry, the Clergy, and the Burghers. But as 
 the sky grew darker — and everything looked more threatening 
 — it was felt this was not enough. The whole nation must 
 be bound together in a religious covenant — such covenants 
 having been well known and often used before this time, both 
 for good purposes and for bad. The National Covenant was 
 accordingly framed, in which the Covenanters swore by the 
 great name of the Lord their God that they would continue 
 faithful to the doctrine and discipline of the Church against 
 all errors and corruption, that they would be loyal to his 
 Majesty in defence of the laws, and true to one another. 
 
 On the ist of March a solemn fast was called, and a vast 
 assemblage gathered in the Church of the Greyfriars. After 
 the religious services usual on such occasions, the Covenant 
 was produced and eagerly subscribed by all who were present, 
 
i8o Sf Giles' Lecher es. 
 
 amid immense enthusiasm. It was then hawked through the 
 city, then despatched to every Presbytery in the provinces, and 
 everywhere it was received and signed amid prayers and tears. 
 There was a volcanic outburst of religious feeling, and in the 
 white heat generated thereby the whole population was welded 
 together and became as one man. The excitement was not 
 confined to any one class — almost all the nobles, the barons, 
 the burgesses, as well as the clergy, had signed the Covenant. 
 Aberdeen only and some of the Glasgow professors held 
 back, and they were regarded as the opprobrium of the nation. 
 
 News of all this was swiftly carried to London, where some 
 advised that fire and sword should be used as a remedy ; but 
 it was felt that this might be a dangerous experiment, more 
 especially as the king ' had fish to fry at home,' as the people 
 said, and so it was thought safer to send down the Marquis 
 of Hamilton as a royal commissioner, to do what he could to 
 punish or appease the rebels. The people demanded that 
 there should be a General Assembly and a Parliament to 
 settle their affairs \ and after long hesitation and with much 
 reluctance, the commissioner made the concession. 
 
 On the 2 1 St November 1638, the General Assembly met 
 in the Cathedral Church of Glasgow. No Assembly had met 
 for twenty years, or, as many said, for more than thirty years ; 
 for they would not recognise as Assemblies the meetings from 
 1606 to 16 18, which, at the dictation of the king, had over- 
 turned Presbytery and set up Episcopacy. But now there was 
 a General Assembly once more. It was a wonderful gathering 
 of all the notables of the kingdom. It consisted of one hundred 
 and forty ministers, seventeen nobles, nine knights, twenty- 
 five landed proprietors, and forty-seven burgesses. No Parlia- 
 ment which could have been convened at that time would 
 have so fully represented the national feeling. The Marquis 
 of Hamilton acted as the Lord High Commissioner ; Alexander 
 Henderson, minister of Leuchars, was raised to the Moderator's 
 Chair ; and he had deserved the honour by his heroic defence 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 1 8 1 
 
 of Covenanting principles, as well as by his moderation and 
 learning. He is still honoured as one of the chief worthies 
 of the Covenanting time. 
 
 The temper of the Assembly was evident from the first. It 
 resolved to put the bishops on their trial ; and when the Lord 
 High Commissioner found he could not prevent this, he dis- 
 solved the Assembly in the king's name, and withdrew. But 
 there was not a moment's hesitation — the business went on just 
 as before. The Five Articles of Perth, the Book of Canons, 
 and the Service-book were abjured and condemned. The 
 bishops were all deposed from their bishoprics, and eight of 
 them were excommunicated — * given over to the devil for the 
 destruction of their flesh, that their souls might be saved in the 
 day of the Lord.' The whole fabric of Episcopacy was thrown 
 down, and Presbyterianism in its power and purity restored. 
 
 It was indeed a remarkable Assembly — remarkable for its 
 courage, its thoroughness, its contempt of all authority but its 
 own. It can only be compared to the French Convention at 
 the outbreak of the Revolution. What did it matter to it that 
 the hierarchy had been established by Acts of Parliament ? It 
 crumpled up Acts of Parliament like waste-paper. It treated 
 king and council and the whole Three Estates as if they had no 
 voice in the government of the realm. But it had good reason 
 for its high-handedness. The country was with it. 
 
 Another thing is very remarkable about this Assembly — the 
 rancorous hatred exhibited against Episcopacy. Episcopacy 
 had now existed in Scotland for upwards of thirty years — the 
 lifetime of a generation. Three-fourths of the clergy must have 
 entered the Church during its existence, and received ordination 
 from the bishops. The remaining fourth must at least have 
 acknowledged the jurisdiction of their diocesans in many ways, 
 and lived at peace with them, though it is possible some old 
 men may have looked back with longing to 'the former days.' 
 But now they were one and all seized with a revolutionary 
 fury, and not only overturned the religious system under which 
 
1 82 Si Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 they had lived all their days, but charged their former patrons 
 and friends with all imaginable and unimaginable crimes. The 
 only possible explanation is, that the chief motive power in the 
 Assembly was lay rather than clerical. The one hundred and 
 forty ministers, though forming a majority of the Assembly, were 
 scarcely a full representation of the Church; and scarcely a 
 match for all the baronial and burghal power of the kingdom. 
 We know that before the Assembly met, the Clerical Table had 
 more than once come nearly to a rupture with the other Tables, 
 more especially regarding the method of choosing represent- 
 atives. That the laity, and especially the great landed pro- 
 prietors, had for the nonce conceived a violent dislike of the 
 bishops, is certain. Episcopal writers assert that the revocation 
 of the Act of Annexation, and the fear of losing their Church- 
 lands, lay at the bottom of the whole matter. There is cer- 
 tainly a curious contrast between the subserviency of the nobles 
 in helping on the Episcopal schemes of James, when he was 
 silent regarding the episcopal revenues, and their opposition to 
 the schemes of Charles, when he told them that if there were to 
 be bishops, they must be supported by the bishops' lands. 
 However this may have been, it is certain the great body of the 
 people still retained their affection for Presbytery and its simple 
 ritual, or there would never have been such a general revolt. 
 Episcopacy in their minds was associated with despotism and 
 the loss of national independence. 
 
 When the Assembly had done its work and dissolved, a 
 humble petition to the king, which had been agreed upon, was 
 despatched to London, and the Marquis of Hamilton, after 
 some hesitation, presented it on his bended knees. On hearing 
 it, Charles said : * When they have broken my head, they will 
 put on my cowl;' and would not vouchsafe any other reply. 
 Civil war was inevitable, and the Scotch army was soon 
 encamped on Dunse Law Hill overlooking the Tweed. His 
 Excellency Field-Marshal Leslie — ' a little crookit soldier,' who 
 had been trained to war under Gustavus Adolphus, and borne a 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 183 
 
 distinguished 'part in the terrible battles with Wallenstein and 
 Tilly — held the chief command. Almost all the colonels were 
 noblemen, who led their own vassals. At each tent-door there 
 floated a flag, with the motto, * For Christ's Crown and 
 Covenant.' There was psalm -singing everywhere ; preaching 
 continually ; but still strict discipline and daily drill were 
 maintained ; and the king, who was on the other side of the 
 river with an English army, not very enthusiastic in his cause, 
 began to think it would not be wise to test the fighting powers 
 of the Covenanters. Accordingly, after some negotiation, articles 
 of peace were agreed upon, the king undertaking to call 
 a General Assembly and Parliament to settle the affairs of the 
 country. It is characteristic of the time that the obligation to 
 disband the forces and deliver up the sti'ongholds of the country 
 to the king, was signed by three noblemen, two ministers, and 
 the Clerk of the Assembly. Things being thus arranged, the 
 wags in the English camp said the Scotch bishops had been 
 sent about their business, neither by canon law nor civil law, 
 but by Dunse law. 
 
 Next year (1639) the General Assembly met, and Lord 
 Traquair appeared as the Lord High Commissioner, to give 
 to its proceedings the stamp of regal authority. As the king 
 persistently declined to acknowledge the Assembly of 1638, 
 this Assembly, to pleasure his Majesty, did all its work over 
 again. It declared the Assemblies of 1606, 1608, 16 10, 16 16, 
 and 1 6 18 to be no Assemblies; it condemned the Book of 
 Canons and the Service-book ; it declared Episcopal government 
 unlawful ' in this Kirk ; ' it revived the Presbyterian polity. The 
 Parliament afterwards virtually ratified all that had been done 
 by the General Assembly. They went further ; they declared 
 that the country was threatened both by land and by sea, and 
 appointed a committee to look to its defence. 
 
 In 1640 it was known that the king was doing his best to muster 
 forces for the invasion of the kingdom ; and the Covenanters 
 resolved to anticipate him. In the month of August they were 
 
184 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 again marching southward, and now crossed the Tweed — the 
 Marquis of Montrose being the first to dash into the river ; and 
 in a few days more they Avere in possession of Newcastle. This 
 bold step compelled the king to call the Parliament, now so 
 well known as the Long Parliament. In the troubles which 
 ensued, and which were daily becoming more menacing, 
 Charles now saw that it was clearly his interest to conciliate his 
 Scotch subjects. In 1641 he came to Scotland — a different 
 man from what he was in 1633. He humbly took part in the 
 Presbyterian worship ; he agreed that none should sit in Parlia- 
 ment till they had signed the Covenant ; he gave his sanction 
 to the Acts of the Parliament of 1640 ; and finally showered 
 honours and Church-lands on those who had thwarted him in 
 everything. It must have been a bitter draught for him. 
 
 Next year the great Rebellion broke out in England. It is 
 not for me to trace the ebb and flow of the bloody tide ; but I 
 may mention that even before the royal standard was erected at 
 Nottingham in August 1642, the English Parliament had sent 
 commissioners to the Scotch Assembly, craving its sympathy 
 and friendship. Again, in 1643, commissioners from the 
 English Parliament appeared in the General Assembly, asking 
 its prayers and its help in the struggle they had begun. They 
 narrated their achievements — how they had ejected the bishops 
 from the House of Lords, overthrown Episcopacy, summoned 
 an assembly of learned divines to meet at Westminster and 
 settle the doctrine and worship of the Church. All this was 
 music to the ears of the Scotch Covenanters. It is true the 
 king had granted them all they had desired. But these Parlia- 
 mentary commissioners promised them still more. There was to 
 be Presbytery not only in Scotland, but in England and Ireland 
 too. And had they not shewn they were in earnest by what 
 they had already done ! And what a proud thing it would be 
 for Scotland — for the General Assembly to give religion and 
 law to the three kingdoms ! The Scotch divines became 
 drunken -with the thought. The English deputies hinted at a 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 185 
 
 civil alliance ; but no — it must be a religious covenant which 
 would bind the nations into one. The Solemn League and 
 Covenant was accordingly framed, and the Assembly with one 
 voice gave it their assent. The Estates were sitting at the 
 same time, and they also, on the same afternoon, gave it their 
 sanction ; for the Parliament in those palmy days existed only 
 to register the decisions of the Church. Next month it was 
 sworn to by the English Parliament and the Westminster 
 divines, and thus a solemn league, a holy alliance, was formed 
 to extirpate every form of religious faith but one, and to drive 
 Papistical Irishmen, Prelatic Englishmen, and Presbyterian 
 Scotchmen into the one Church — by fire and sword if needful. 
 The full meaning of the International Covenant was seen when 
 in January 1644 — two or three months after it was sworn to — the 
 Scotch army crossed the Tweed and marched into England. 
 
 It would not become me, in this place, to follow the fortunes 
 of the war — to describe the battle-fields in England and Scot- 
 land, where Cavaliers and Roundheads, King's-men and Cove- 
 nanters struggled together. I would rather sit as an auditor in 
 the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster, and report the debates 
 of the assembled divines when they were formulating the faith, 
 worship, and discipline which our Church has inherited, though 
 the Church of England has repudiated them. But neither my 
 time nor my text allows me to go beyond Scottish ground. 
 I can only look at these stirring incidents from this side of the 
 Border, In 1645, the Directory for the Public Worship of God 
 was laid before the General Assembly, and accepted by it, with 
 a trifling exception regarding the administration of the I^ord's 
 Supper. It is curious that the Assembly never once refers to 
 its own Book of Common Order — the Liturgy of the Church up 
 to that time. But that book seems never to have taken a hold 
 on the Scottish heart ; it had fallen in estimation since the 
 disputes about prayer-books had begun and extempore prayer 
 had come into vogue, and so its very existence was ignored. 
 
 The same Assembly gave its sanction in a general way not 
 
1 86 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 exactly to the Westminster form of Church government, but 
 to ' the propositions concerning the officers, AssembUes, and 
 government of the Church, and concerning the ordination of 
 ministers brought unto us as the results of the long and learned 
 debates of the Assembly of Divines sitting at Westminster.' It 
 protested, however, that certain points were to be open 
 questions — admitting further discussion ; for the Scotch Church 
 did not wish to bind itself hand and foot for ever. The fact is, 
 there had been bitter disappointment that the Presbyterian 
 polity had not been settled more definitely and declared to be 
 jure divino. We may be glad it was as it was, thanks to the 
 Independents and Erastians. 
 
 It was not till 1647 the Confession of Faith was laid before 
 the Assembly. The Assembly approved of it, but in a very 
 guarded away. They found it ' agreeable to the Word of God,' 
 ' in nothing contrary to the received doctrine ' necessary ' for the 
 intended uniformity in religion.' They further judge it to be 
 ' most orthodox,' and agree that it be a ' Common Confession of 
 Faith for the three kingdoms.' They, however, take exception 
 to its teaching on two different points, more especially regard- 
 ing the authority of the civil power in ecclesiastical affairs. 
 Knox's Confession is never referred to. Everything was to be 
 sacrificed to the mad desire for Uniformity. 
 
 It is clear from all this the Scotch Church did not view these 
 Westminster documents as absolutely true or as universally 
 binding. They were to form the common basis, the rallying- 
 point, the articles of union, the colours of the great united 
 Church of the three kingdoms — nothing more. No attempt 
 was made to compel every minister and elder to subscribe 
 them. The Westminster divines had themselves disclaimed 
 infallibility. Looked at in this light, they are worthy of high 
 praise. The Confession is a logical compendium of the Cal- 
 vinistic theology of the period ; while the Directory and Form of 
 Government are plainly a compromise between the ideas preva- 
 lent among the English Puritans and Scotch Presbyterians 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 187 
 
 regarding worship and discipline. They will ever form a great 
 landmark in the progress of religious thought ; but how long a 
 way have we travelled since they were set up ! Looking to the 
 new questions which have been opened since that time, they 
 look like the cast-off slough of controversies long since dead. 
 
 While divines at Westminster and Edinburgh were thus 
 fixing the religious faith and worship of a Church which was 
 never to exist, the terrible arbitrament of war was going against 
 the king. In May 1646, he came as a fugitive within the 
 Scotch lines ; on the 30th of January 1647, he was given over to 
 the tender mercies of his English subjects ; and on the same 
 day of the same month in 1649, he was beheaded in front of 
 Whitehall. Oliver Cromwell reigned in his stead as Lord Pro- 
 tector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. 
 But the Scots were almost as loyal as they were religious. They 
 refused to acknowledge the new government. They proclaimed 
 Charles II. king, and invited him to come over from Holland 
 and be crowned. He came, professed himself a Presbyterian, 
 signed the Covenant, listened to no end of sermons in some of 
 which the blood-guiltiness of his father and mother was pro- 
 claimed, and promised everything he was asked. The less 
 shrewd of the Covenanters were rather proud of their convert ; 
 but they paid for it with their best blood at Dunbar and 
 Worcester. 
 
 Cromwell was now supreme; and as he knew the General 
 Assembly had for the last ten years overridden the Parliament 
 and managed everything, he resolved to put it down. As he 
 himself had shortly before entered the Long Parliament and 
 stamped on the floor, and put an end to its palaver, so now by 
 his orders one of his colonels in 1653 entered the Assembly, 
 asked by what authority they met, and then told them to be- 
 gone. And it was for this the Church of Scotland had given 
 up its own Confession, its own Prayer-book, its own traditions ! 
 The glorious vision of a great united Church, on the Presby- 
 terian model, in Scotland, England, and Ireland, had vanished 
 
1 88 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 for ever ; and sectaries of every kind, who scorned the Covenants 
 and preached universal toleration, carried everything before 
 them. 
 
 Under the stern rule of the Protector, the Church of Scotland 
 found the same liberty of faith and worship which was accorded 
 to all who did not violate the law or shew themselves danger- 
 ous to the state. But it was torn by internal dissensions. The 
 troublous times through which it had passed had left a legacy 
 of bitterness behind. The religion of Scotland at this unhappy 
 period, sometimes so much vaunted, consisted mainly in the 
 rival parties hating, cursing, and excommunicating one another. 
 There were Engagers, Remonstrants, Resolutioners, and Pro- 
 testers, all symbolising special feuds, and doing their best to 
 propagate them. The man who happened to differ from the 
 prevailing party in any political or ecclesiastical affair was 
 stigmatised as a Malignant, and compelled to do penance in 
 sackcloth at the church-door before he was admitted to the 
 meanest office in Church or State. And all this uncharitable- 
 ness blossomed and bore its fruit in an atmosphere heated with 
 religion, or at least what was thought religion at the time. 
 Some of our worst bigotries — still living, though now fast dying 
 — were generated amid these malarious exhalations. 
 
 Ever since the days of Melville, Presbyterian Scotland had 
 been gradually becoming more and more Puritanic. In the 
 days of Knox, our Church was emphatically a broad Church, 
 anxious to be on good terms with every reformed Church of 
 Europe, and more especially with the Church of England. 
 Untroubled itself with any controversy about Vestments, the 
 General Assembly in 1566 addressed a letter to the English 
 bishops begging them not to press the use of ' surcloath, cornet, 
 cape and tippet ' upon those whose consciences rebelled against 
 them. It speaks of these things as 'vain trifles' — will not 
 determine 'whether such apparel is to be counted among things 
 simple and indifferent or not;' but 'in the bowels of Jesus 
 Christ they crave that Christian charity may prevail,' seeing 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Puritanism in Scotland. 189 
 
 ' how tender a thing the conscience of man is.' This is truly 
 admirable. But the course of events naturally drew the English 
 Puritans and Scotch Presbyterians closer and closer together. 
 Most of the Puritans were in fact Presbyterians ; and the anti- 
 Episcopal policy of Melville naturally widened the gap between 
 the two national Churches. Bancroft's pamphlet — Dangerous 
 Positions, or Scottish Genevatiiig and English Scott izing for Dis- 
 cipline — betrays the jealousy of the Anglican prelate. The 
 Scotch Church was regarded as exercising a bad influence upon 
 England, and as fostering Puritanism. It is evermore to be 
 regretted that this rupture between the two Churches began, 
 for otherwise they might have acted and reacted beneficially 
 on one another. From this time a somewhat gloomy view of 
 Christianity — a somewhat stern conception of Sabbath-keeping 
 and church-going — began to grow up. What we now call the 
 sesthetical was banished more and more from the Church 
 services, and great virtue was attached to long sermons and 
 prayers almost as long. 
 
 In so far as the clergy of those days did their best to enforce 
 the Ten Commandments, we must heartily applaud them ; and 
 there was need for their severity ; but some of their efforts in 
 this direction seem strange to us now. They had great faith 
 in the power of shame ; and the pillory, the jougs, and the 
 cutty-stool were the instruments they employed for reforming 
 the manners of the age. Their excommunication was as terrible 
 as the anathemas or interdicts of Rome. We see them busy 
 at work in the minutes of the Assembly and of the inferior 
 courts. The elders and deacons who attended Robin Hood 
 Plays on the Sunday were put under discipline. All markets 
 and fairs on the Sunday — all work, even in harvest-time — were 
 forbidden. And the Church was no respecter of persons. 
 Earls and Countesses frequently appeared before the kirk- 
 session, and had to stand at the church-doors clothed in sack- 
 cloth for their sins. The ministers, as often as occasion 
 presented, took it upon them to rebuke King James for his 
 
I go S^ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 swearing propensity ; and he seems generally to have taken it 
 well, and to have laughed at them good-naturedly. In 1591, 
 a deputation of ministers visited Holyrood to see if the royal 
 household was religiously conducted, and they urged upon 
 James to have the Scriptures read at table both at dinner and 
 supper. In 1596, he again had his sins set before his face, 
 for he does not seem to have benefited by the advice he had 
 received five years before. It would appear he frequently 
 omitted to say grace before and after meat, that he rarely came 
 to the week-day sermon, that he was 'bloated with banning 
 and swearing,' and encouraged his courtiers by his evil example 
 to do the like. It would further appear that the queen was 
 little better than himself; for she did not repair to the Word 
 and Sacraments as regularly as she might, and was fond of balls 
 and such-like amusements. 
 
 In the Assembly of 1638, among the crimes charged upon 
 the bishops was Sabbath-breaking, playing at cards and dice, 
 dancing, and the omission of worship in their families. It 
 would appear the doing or not doing these things distinguished 
 the Episcopalians and Presbyterians of those days. When 
 Episcopacy was brushed away, and the high-flying Remon- 
 strants and Protesters ruled the country, still stricter notions of 
 Sabbath-keeping and church-going began. It was not unusual 
 for the elders to make a round of the public-houses during 
 divine service to see if there were any delinquents who preferred 
 tippling beer to hearing the word ; and private houses were 
 sometimes visited in this way too, and lazy housewives without 
 an excuse were summoned before the session. The well-mean- 
 ing but somewhat officious elders never hesitated to penetrate 
 into the sanctities of domestic life ; and these intrusions were 
 generally meekly submitted to. 
 
 But perhaps the most characteristic feature of the time was 
 the stress laid upon days of fasting, preaching, and prayer. The 
 diaries of the time are full of notices of such days with their 
 protracted services. Spalding says ' the people were " vexed to 
 
Episcopacy, Presbytery, and Pziritanism in Scotland. 191 
 
 death " with their continual fastings and thanksgivings.' Bishop 
 Burnet tells us of his uncle Johnstone of Warriston, that ' he 
 would often pray in his family two hours at a time,' and that ' he 
 had very high notions of lengthened devotions, in which he 
 continued many hours a day.' And speaking elsewhere of the 
 Presbyterians, he remarks : ' Long sermons and much longer 
 prayers came to be the distinction of the party. This they 
 carried even to the saying grace before and after meat some- 
 times to the length of a whole hour.' It is probable there is a 
 little exaggeration in this, but it is certain there is much truth 
 in it, and the practices of those days have in some quarters 
 floated down to our own. We should not wonder at these 
 excesses in fasting, preaching, and praying, when we remember 
 how heated the atmosphere was both politically and ecclesias- 
 tically. They were the natural outcome of the existing condi- 
 tions. It was an earnest age, and required to be so. These 
 men who thus fasted and preached and prayed all the day long, 
 were not vulgar ranters or hollow hypocrites ; they were terribly 
 in earnest, and they were wrestling with God for the salvation of 
 their country and their Church. And we must remember that 
 preaching then — when the country was all astir with emotion — 
 must have been much more exciting than it is now. There 
 were then no penny papers — no political leaders — no letters 
 from special correspondents. The pulpit was the only source 
 of ' light and leading.' The burghers in the towns, and the 
 farmers in the rural parishes, sat for hours while the ministers 
 declaimed against the vices of kings and courts and parliaments, 
 or described the marching and the fighting of the Covenanted 
 armies, or bewailed the victories of Montrose, or gave thanks 
 to God for his defeat at Philiphaugh. The preachers of those 
 days preached to the times, and therein lay their power. They 
 educated the whole people to think as they did. It is impos- 
 sible to deny that the influence of the pulpit was in the main 
 good. It was all on the side of morality and liberty. It has 
 never been charged with venality or time-serving. 
 
192 Si Giles' Lectures. 
 
 The counsels of the Church during these stormy days were 
 guided by a band of men, undoubtedly distinguished for learn- 
 ing and eloquence, though none of them rose to the rare alti- 
 tude of greatness. The times were scarcely such as to make 
 greatness possible. Knox and Melville were both great, partly 
 from the times in which they lived. Knox pulled down 
 Romanism, Melville set up Presbyterianism ; and these were 
 feats which could not be performed every day. Henderson, 
 Douglas, Gillespie, Rutherford, Baillie, all did their part well ; 
 but after all, it was only in the see-saw struggle of Presbyterian- 
 ism and Episcopacy. They were all ardent lovers of liberty, 
 and Rutherford is well known to have been in principle a 
 republican. It was in their time the great party-name of Whig 
 was first used. 
 
 The fierce controversies and civil strifes I have described were 
 only the ground-swell which necessarily followed the storm of 
 the Reformation. It was impossible that after such a terrible 
 upheaval, things should settle down all at once into calm, and 
 contentment, and order. The Reformation in Germany was 
 followed by the Thirty Years' War, the traces of which are said 
 to be visible still, in tracts of land previously cultivated but 
 now lying waste, and villages then burned and still unbuilt. 
 Let us be thankful that though Montrose swept over our 
 country like a fiery meteor, and though Cromwell made many a 
 gallant though fanatic Scotchman bite the dust at Dunbar, all 
 the physical vestiges of the struggle have long since dis- 
 appeared ; and though we may be still to some extent influenced 
 by the traditions of the times, it is not altogether to be regretted, 
 for they have given intensity to our religious faith and feelings. 
 We are none the worse of having a little of the Covenanter in 
 us to modify the indifferentism of the nineteenth century. 
 
ST GILES" LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE COVENANT, 1660 to 1690 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Edinburgh. 
 
 nPHE later, like the earlier, stages of the Covenanting period 
 •^ of Scottish Church History still awaken very different 
 feelings in those who contemplate them from different party 
 points of view. But, of course, the true point of view from 
 which to contemplate them — the only properly historical point 
 of view — is one higher and more general than any which can 
 be appropriated by a party. To this point we must seek to 
 rise. The views obtained from lower elevations will be com- 
 paratively narrow and perverted ; and we may be assured that 
 in so far as they do not include truth they cannot be useful, 
 and that in so far as they contain error they must be hurtful. 
 Few things are likely to injure a people more than the mis- 
 interpretation of any important chapter of its own history. 
 How much humiliation and unhappiness has France suffered 
 during the last fifty years because large classes of her citizens 
 
194 'S'/ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 would persist in looking back at her first Revolution and the 
 career of her first Napoleon from the low levels of party pre- 
 judice, and through the distorting media of passion, exaggera- 
 tion, and fiction. No social organisation is more dependent 
 for its welfare on the recognition of historical truth than the 
 Church, which, in so far as it truly lives at all, lives by the 
 truth. Nothing but the truth in regard to its history will do 
 any honest Church real good ; and the whole truth, pure and 
 simple, will be always more welcome and more profitable to 
 such a Church than a part of the truth or a mixture of truth 
 and error. 
 
 The partisan spirit in dealing with the period of history 
 under consideration shews itself by deviation from the line of 
 historical justice towards one or other of these extremes — a 
 judgment wholly favourable to the Royalist and Episcopal side, 
 or to the popular and Presbyterian side. It is, in consequence, 
 apt to flatter itself that it is promoting the interests either of 
 monarchy and Episcopacy or of popular freedom and Pres- 
 bytery. In thus judging, however, it is mistaken. No great 
 cause or party can at the present day be benefited by its 
 advocacy. Monarchy and Episcopacy have certainly nothing 
 to gain by defending the conduct of the last two Stuart kings 
 and of Sharp and his coadjutors. The men who sought to 
 force Episcopacy on Covenanting Scotland by physical con- 
 straint and pressure were the worst enemies Episcopacy has 
 ever had in Scotland. No Episcopalian need feel specially 
 concerned to defend their memories ; and no fair-minded Pres- 
 byterian will hold Episcopacy responsible for their measures. 
 On the other hand, it only tends to discredit Presbyterianism 
 in the eyes of persons Avho care for truth and accuracy, to 
 indulge in those indiscriminate and unqualified panegyrics on 
 the Covenanters which conceal the fact that some of their 
 principles and many of their proceedings were unjustifiable. 
 Every Presbyterian denomination in this country now rejects 
 doctrines which the Covenanters deemed of vital importance. 
 
The Covenant. 195 
 
 Few Presbyterian Christians, it is to be hoped, would now, 
 under any circumstances, commit some of the actions which the 
 Covenanters thought they were bound by the law of God to 
 perform. 
 
 In order to follow intelligently the course of events in Scot- 
 land from 1660 to 1690, the state of the country at the 
 Restoration must be clearly realised. At that date, then, 
 Presbyterian Scotland had been held for nine years as a 
 conquered province by Puritan England. The strong man 
 armed, who humbled the military pride of the nation at Dunbar 
 and Worcester, remained its absolute master to the day of his 
 death, and left it in the power of his soldiers. The rule of the 
 alien was as just and lenient, perhaps, as the circumstances 
 allowed, but, of course, it was hated, although outwardly 
 obeyed. The nation, notwithstanding its sharp controversies 
 with its kings, was, on the whole, sincerely Royalist. Few of 
 the people of Scotland did not wish to have their own heredi- 
 tary monarch, although many of them wished to have him only 
 if he would subscribe the Covenant and obey the Kirk. The 
 soldiery maintained order in the land, so that life and property 
 were perhaps safer than they had ever been before; the civil 
 and judicial administrations were vigorous and impartial ; but 
 the statement of various historians that the condition of the 
 country was one of physical prosperity, must be rejected. That 
 trade and agriculture were in a most depressed state; that 
 taxation was felt to be intolerably severe, although the revenue 
 raised by it was only about half of what was required to meet the 
 civil and military expenditure ; that great poverty prevailed ; that 
 a gloomy despondency overspread the community — might be 
 shewn by a mass of evidence. The nobility had suffered most. 
 Its chief representatives had been slain or had fled the country, 
 or were lying imprisoned in England, or were hiding in the 
 Highlands. The rest were living in obscurity, afraid to make 
 a movement which would remind their enemies of their exist- 
 ence. Most of them had been spoiled of their estates ; hardly 
 
196 Sf ales' Lectures. 
 
 any of them were not overwhelmed with debt. Argyll alone, 
 perhaps, had been able to keep hold of what belonged to him ; 
 and even he was ' drowned in debt and obloquy.' 
 
 The religious condition of the country was less lamentable 
 than the political, but it was utterly unlike the picture which 
 Kirkton and other historians have drawn of it. Gross wicked- 
 ness and great crimes were not rare. Cloaks of piety were 
 worn by many whose ungodly passions they only partially 
 concealed. Religious profession was general, and religious 
 sincerity was, as the subsequent history fully proved, the rule 
 and not the exception; but there was a terrible lack of that 
 highest Christian grace, the charity so worthily eulogised by St 
 Paul. Presbyterianism was dominant, but, as explained in the 
 previous lecture, was broken up into parties which hated and 
 reviled one another. The enthusiasm for Presbyterianism had 
 greatly declined in consequence of its internal dissensions and 
 the national misfortunes to which they had led. The clergy 
 were, however, in general, notably faithful and earnest ministers 
 of the Word ; and their flocks were sincerely attached to them. 
 The favourers of Episcopacy were numerous in the North, and 
 increased among the upper classes as it became more and more 
 obvious that their only hope of deliverance from worldly ruin 
 lay in the success of a Royalist reaction. The 'sectaries,' 
 as they were called, came in with, and' were almost confined 
 to, Cromwell's troopers ; their doctrines made few converts. 
 Religious toleration was enforced ; but this was felt to be a 
 sore grievance and a deadly sin. 
 
 The restoration in 1660 of Charles II. to the throne of his 
 ancestors was hailed in Scotland as in England with enthusiastic 
 joy. England welcomed it as a deliverance from the military 
 despotism, the severe morality, and the religious peculiarities of 
 Puritanism, all of which had gradually become hateful to the 
 large majority of Englishmen. Scotland welcomed it as the 
 recovery of national independence and the commencement of 
 an era of peace and prosperity. In the month of June 1660, 
 
The Covenant. 197 
 
 Scotland was in great excitement. In the churches there were 
 thanksgivings ; in pubUc halls there were banquets ; at the 
 market crosses there were crowds drinking claret to the health 
 of the king and the Duke of York ; bonfires blazed on the hill- 
 tops, and the streets were gay with flags by day and brightly 
 illuminated by night ; over all the land there were piping and 
 dancing and immoderate mirth ; and on the roads to London 
 there were numbers of Scotchmen of all ranks and degrees 
 eager to congratulate his Majesty, and anxious to secure prefer- 
 ment and emolument. At the fireworks on the Castle-hill, an 
 effigy of Cromwell chased by an effigy of the devil till the 
 former was blown up, gave particular satisfaction. At a bonfire 
 near the Tron Church, the Janet Geddes who in 1637 threw a 
 stool at the head of a dean, now presided at the burning of 
 her ' chair of state ' and ' all her creels, baskets, creepies, 
 and furms.' Times had changed, and men and women had 
 changed with them. In the minds of the thoughtful, how- 
 ever, joy was not unmixed with disquietude. This question 
 could not be evaded : What will be done as to religion ? And 
 the consideration of it could not fail to produce anxiety. 
 Probably no person or party either in Scotland or in England 
 anticipated what really and speedily happened, but every 
 sincere and intelligent Presbyterian must have felt in some 
 measure that the situation was a critical one. 
 
 The Resolutioners, who formed the largest and most mode- 
 rate Presbyterian party, had, as soon as they perceived it to be 
 likely that the monarchy would be restored, intrusted the repre- 
 sentation of their interests with the king and his advisers, to 
 one of their number who had acquired by his conduct in foniier 
 difficult transactions a reputation among them as a trusty 
 and skilful negotiator. This dexterous ecclesiastical diploma- 
 tist was the Rev. James Sharp of Crail ; and his instructions 
 were, in the main, these : ' To use his endeavours that the 
 Church of Scotland should enjoy the freedom and privileges of 
 its judicatories, as ratified by law ; to represent by all prudent 
 
198 S^ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 and lawful means the sinfulness and offensiveness of the 
 toleration then established ; and to attempt to secure the right 
 application and increase of the ministers' stipends.' From the 
 middle of February to the end of August he was out of 
 Scotland, and chiefly about the Court at Breda and London, 
 professedly carrying out these instructions. According to the 
 view given in the numerous letters which he wrote to the Rev. 
 Robert Douglas and other leaders of the Resolutioners, he 
 soon saw that the idea of getting Presbyterianism established 
 in England was altogether chimerical, and that even its claims 
 to establishment in Scotland must be urged with caution and 
 moderation ; found, as time went on, the gale always blowing 
 stronger for Prelacy and Erastianism; was much thwarted 
 by influential persons, lay and clerical, who wished to bring in 
 Episcopacy into Scotland ; much saddened and wearied out by 
 what he heard and saw ; but at length obtained from the 
 king, who was personally averse to meddling with the Church 
 government, a promise that Scottish Presbyterianism would not 
 be disturbed. 
 
 With this promise in the form of a letter from the king, 
 directed to Mr Douglas, to be communicated to the Presbytery 
 of Edinburgh, Mr Sharp returned to Scotland, reaching Edin- 
 burgh on the last day of August, On the 3d of September the 
 letter was read. In it the king said : * We do resolve to 
 protect and preserve the government of the Church of Scotland, 
 as it is settled by law, without violation.' He also stated 
 that he intended to call a General Assembly as soon as affairs 
 permitted, and to consult with Mr Robert Douglas and some 
 other ministers as to what might further concern the affairs 
 of the Church. This letter, in accordance with a command 
 which it contained, was transmitted by the Presbytery of Edin- 
 burgh to all the other Presbyteries in the kingdom, and was, of 
 course, received by them with great satisfaction. It was a dis- 
 tinct pledge that the existing Church government would not be 
 unsettled. 
 
The Covenant. 199 
 
 Just a week before Sharp reached Edhiburgh, a few zealous 
 Protesters — ten clergymen and two laymen — met in a private 
 house in the city. Among them was Mr James Guthrie, 
 the .leader of the Protesters. They drew up a very char- 
 acteristic document in the form of a supplication and address 
 to the king. In it they implored his Majesty to ' extirpate 
 Popery, Prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and 
 everything contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godli- 
 ness ; ' to ' fill all places of trust, not only in Scotland but 
 in England and Ireland, with those who had taken the Covenant 
 and were of known affection to the cause of God ; ' and to 
 'remove the beginnings of stumbling that had already been 
 given, by taking away the ceremonies and Service-book from 
 his own chapel and family, and other places of his dominions.' 
 This was still the Protesters' ideal of good government. But 
 the general body of Presbyterians had not been so blind to the 
 teaching of experience. If the king and his councillors had left 
 the Presbyterian government of the Church undisturbed, and 
 the petitions of the Protesters unnoticed, Protesters would have 
 rapidly diminished. Unfortunately this was not the course they 
 took. 
 
 It so happened that the Committee of Estates began to sit 
 on the day on which the Supplication mentioned was being 
 drawn up, and one of its first acts was to cause the assembled 
 Protesters to be arrested and imprisoned. On the following 
 day a proclamation was issued against meetings and conven- 
 tions which had not been specially authorised by his Majesty, 
 and against seditious petitions and remonstrances. Later, the 
 Committee imprisoned various other Protesters, prohibited the 
 owning or promoting the Remonstrance, ordered the Lex Rex 
 of Rutherford and the Causes of God's Wrath of Guthrie to be 
 called in and burned, and shewed in various ways that the 
 spirit of the governing classes was now very different from what 
 it had been on the day when the National Covenant was signed 
 in the Greyfriars Churchyard. 
 
200 Sf ales' Lectures. 
 
 The Scottish Parliament, with the Earl of Middleton, a 
 rough, imperious, dissolute soldier, as Royal Commissioner, met 
 on the I St of January 1661. It shewed itself slavishly and 
 madly Royalist. It proclaimed the supremacy of the king 
 over all persons and causes. It forbade the renewing of the 
 Covenant. It passed a marvellous Rescissory Act which 
 expunged from the statute-book all legislation later than 1633. 
 Thus at one stroke every law which the Presbyterians and 
 Covenanters had passed was swept away. This Act was carried 
 on the 28th of March, almost unanimously. As early as the 
 loth of January there had been eager Royalists to suggest this 
 measure, but Middleton checked their zeal. 
 
 On the 1 6th of April, the Marquis of Argyll was brought 
 before the bar of the House on the charge of high treason. 
 The trial ended on the 25th of May with his condemnation 
 to death. The sentence was executed two days thereafter. 
 Argyll had played such a part in the history of his country that 
 his trial and condemnation seemed to be the trial and con- 
 demnation of Covenanting Scotland. There may easily be 
 different opinions as to various parts of his conduct. There 
 can be but one as to the moral grandeur of his death. That 
 death freed the king from the only man in Scotland whose 
 intellect and power he had much reason to dread ; and yet, 
 perhaps, it injured him more than anything Argyll could have 
 done against him. For years before the Restoration, Argyll 
 was generally distrusted and disliked ; his death gratified many 
 personal enemies, but it caused multitudes to remember only 
 his services and great qualities. 
 
 Four days after it, Mr James Guthrie was executed. He had 
 done more, I think, than any man of his time to divide and 
 weaken the Presbyterianism which he loved so well ; he was a 
 persecutor in principle, and ready to be so in fact; he had 
 clamoured for the blood of conscientious men whom he called 
 malignants ; but he was a sincere and heroic man, and, accord- 
 ing to the light he had, a most pious man, He was willing to 
 
The Covenant. 201 
 
 sacrifice everything, even to the laying down of his life, for 
 every principle which he held. He had certainly been very 
 troublesome to the Royalist cause in Scotland ; but he had also 
 been warmly attached to it, and had done much to keep affec- 
 tion for it alive when the hearts of less courageous men were 
 failing them for fear of Cromwell. Nothing on earth could 
 frighten James Guthrie. In London, four years before the 
 Restoration, he had stood up in public debate against Hugh 
 Peters, Cromwell's chaplain, and had, in the presence of 
 Cromwell's officers, maintained the right of the king. That 
 might have been remembered now. He died despising death ; 
 speaking for an hour on the ladder as calmly as if he had been 
 preaching in the pulpit; reasserting the principles to which 
 he had so often testified and from which he had never 
 wavered ; and declaring that ' the covenants could be loosed or 
 dispensed with by no person or power on earth, but were still 
 binding upon the three kingdoms, and would be so for ever 
 hereafter.' His last words were : ' The Covenants, the Cove- 
 nants, shall yet be Scotland's reviving.' 
 
 The Synods of the Church met in April and May. The 
 southern Synods protested, some]^niore and some less decidedly, 
 against the Rescissory Act, but even at this critical time there 
 was bitter strife in them between Resolutioners and Protesters. 
 Some of these Synods were forcibly dissolved by Royalist noble- 
 men. The northern Synods were in favour of the restoration of 
 Episcopacy, or, at least, not opposed to it. Presbyterianism 
 had been forced upon the North, and had no claim to expect 
 support from that quarter. 
 
 In the month of August Charles intimated to the Privy 
 Council his intention to interpose his royal authority to establish 
 government by bishops, as it was previous to the late troubles ; 
 and in doing so he actually referred to his letter of the previous 
 August to the Presbytery of Edinburgh, as if he were now 
 implementing the promise it contained, seeing that Parliament 
 by its Rescissory Act had rendered the Presbyterian form of 
 
202 Sf ales' Lectures. 
 
 Church government no longer that which was settled by law. 
 The moral obtuseness and shamelessness thus displayed tended 
 to confirm the opinion that his letter to the Presbytery had been 
 a deliberate falsehood, never meant to be fulfilled in its plain 
 literal sense, but craftily contrived to throw Presbyterians off 
 their guard. This is the view generally held ; but it cannot, I 
 think, be said to have been proved, and, of course, we are not 
 entitled to believe even the most despicable man more guilty 
 than the evidence shews him to have been. Admitting, how- 
 ever, that his letter was probably not the treacherous lie 
 commonly supposed, his conduct in regard to the promise 
 which it contained was disgraceful. 
 
 The new system was rapidly set up and brought into opera- 
 tion. Long before the year 1662 was out, it was complete and 
 vigorously at work. Bishops were selected, and consecrated, 
 and seated in Parliament, and all the rights and powers of the 
 judicatories of the Church were put into their hands, as being 
 the agents and officers of the king ; the royal supremacy in all 
 matters spiritual was affirmed ; and when that was done, the 
 task of Charles and his councillors was accomplished. A 
 simpler system than the new one there could not be. It needed 
 no change in creed or liturgy, and little or no change in organ- 
 isation. It needed only a king and bishops. The absolute 
 obedience of the clergy and laity to the bishops, and of the 
 bishops to the king — that was its sum and substance. Recog- 
 nition of the royal supremacy in all religious and ecclesiastical 
 questions — that was its life and soul. Erastianism, naked and 
 not ashamed, was what the Church of Scotland now found itself 
 confronted with. 
 
 Could the disastrous revolution which had been thus rapidly 
 effected have been prevented ? Not in the actual circum- 
 stances. To have prevented it, the Presbyterians of Scotland 
 would have required to have been more united and better 
 led, and at once more reasonable and more decided, than 
 they were. The strife of Protesters and Resolutioners, the 
 
The Covenant, 203 
 
 demand of the Protesters to have the Covenants everywhere 
 enforced in their entirety, and the mistake of the Resolutioners 
 in trusting to negotiations with the king, instead of arousing by 
 every means in their power the people to a sense of the serious- 
 ness of the situation, and to a recognition of their duties to the 
 Church and nation, were ruinous errors. Had there been a 
 Knox or a Henderson in the country, affairs would doubtless 
 have been differently managed, but no man of their stamp 
 was vouchsafed at this crisis. The fanaticism of the loyalist 
 and irreligious reaction, instead of being restrained and coun- 
 teracted, was allowed almost free course. 
 
 James Sharp was placed at the head of the new ecclesiastical 
 establishment as Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of 
 Scotland. Soon after his return from London, on the occasion 
 already mentioned, the rumour began to circulate that he had, 
 while professing to act zealously on behalf of the Church of 
 Scotland, been, in reality, selfishly undermining it and joining 
 in a plot against its existence. This rumour continued to 
 spread in spite of the many contradictions which he gave to it ; 
 and when he accepted the Archbishopric, few Presbyterians, at 
 least, doubted its truth, and Protesters and Resolutioners alike 
 looked on him with horror as a perjured traitor of the deepest 
 dye. It is still the prevalent view taken of his conduct. My 
 time does not allow me to discuss the question of its truth or 
 falsity ; but I have considered the evidence which bears on it 
 with some care, and have only been able to come to the con- 
 clusion that the common opinion is not warranted ; that Sharp's 
 decision to abandon Presbyterianism was only made after Pres- 
 bytery had been disestablished by the Scottish Parliament, and 
 the strength of the royalist and anti-covenanting reaction had 
 plainly declared itself; and that, consequently, perjury cannot, 
 in this connection, be justly imputed to him. Scotland was, at 
 this time, untrue to herself, and therefore disposed to believe 
 that she had been betrayed by individuals. Sharp's desertion 
 of the Presbyterian cause, however, cannot be excused. Self- 
 
204 Si Giles' Lectures. 
 
 interest was obviously his chief inducement to the step. He 
 must have foreseen that he would carry to the archiepiscopal 
 throne a reputation for treachery, which would blacken and dis- 
 credit it, and that, as the Primate of the new system, he would 
 be required to labour for the destruction of the independence 
 and liberty to which the Church was entitled. His own letters 
 shew us that he believed the sphere of the Church to be an 
 independent kingdom on which the State ought not to encroach, 
 and he had no riglit to accept a position in which his practice 
 could not fail to be in continual contradiction to this belief. 
 
 The other bishops were much inferior to Sharp in practical 
 ability. Some of them were in every way unworthy of their 
 positions. Only one of them was eminently endowed with 
 ministerial gifts and graces. He was so pre-eminently. As 
 far as I can judge, a purer, humbler, holier spirit than that of 
 Robert Leighton never tabernacled in Scottish clay. He was 
 * like a star which dwelt apart,' while the storm raged below ; 
 or, like a fair flower of Paradise dropped amidst the thorns 
 and thistles on some bleak mountain-side. His character was 
 of an almost ideal excellence, and so divinely beautiful, that 
 men, while attracted by it, were also awed by it, as beyond what 
 imitation could hope to reach in the earthly state of being. 
 His works, owing to the marvellous fullness and perfection of 
 the spiritual life which pervades them, are worth many times 
 over all the writings of all his Scottish contemporaries. There 
 is nothing nearly equal to them in our devotional literature from 
 its rise until now. Once minister of Newbattle, afterwards 
 Principal of Edinburgh University, he was at this time per- 
 suaded, or rather constrained, to accept the bishopric of Dun- 
 blane. There is no room for doubt as to the purity or disin- 
 terestedness of his motives. He looked on his office not as an 
 object of ambition, but as a heavy cross which Providence called 
 him for a season to bear. He cared little for forms of ecclesi- 
 astical polity, but rather preferred the episcopal, and he believed 
 that the bishops could, by humility, gentleness, moderation, and 
 
The Covenant. 205 
 
 the maintenance of the rights of the Christian people, unite all 
 ranks and classes of men in Scotland in the acceptance of a 
 mild and modified Episcopacy, whereas adherence to simple or 
 strict Presbyterianism would keep them divided. He failed to 
 understand the circumstances of the time and the characters of 
 the men around him, but was not chargeable with any graver 
 error. 
 
 What, now, was to be done with the clergy of the dis- 
 established Church? Three methods presented their competing 
 claims. The first was Leighton's. Displace no one ; coerce 
 and oppress no one ; enact and enforce no subscription which 
 can offend any man's conscience ; let the bishops renounce 
 all pomp and pride of office, and confine themselves strictly to 
 spiritual duties; let them be guided by the clergy in their 
 deliberations, and by the people in their presentations; and 
 let their great aim be to secure, by example and persuasion, 
 that pubhc worship be more beautiful, preaching simpler and 
 less controversial, individual piety more diffused, and religious 
 divisions gradually healed. This was the method which he 
 sought to commend to his colleagues, as he and they journeyed 
 from London to Scotland to take possession of their bishoprics ; 
 but he soon found that he would receive no help from them 
 in carrying it out ; and hearing that they intended to make a 
 grand entry into Edinburgh, he quitted them at Morpeth, * very 
 weary of them, as he supposed them to be of him,' and went 
 quietly to the sphere of work which had been assigned to him. 
 There he practised his method, not without success ; and 
 to his dying day he believed that it might have succeeded 
 over all Scotland, if it had been patiently and consistently 
 tried. Possibly it might, if the other bishops had been Robert 
 Leightons, or his equals ; but being only what they were, this 
 plan had no chance. The second method was Sharp's. Self- 
 sacrifice was not one of its principles. He meant to take full 
 advantage of his position, and to rise in the world as high as 
 he could. So far from despising even pomp and parade, when 
 
2o6 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 he rode from Leslie to St Andrews to take possession of his 
 see, it was with an earl on each hand, and between seven and 
 eight hundred mounted gentlemen in his train. But Sharp was 
 a clear-headed, worldly-wise man, and he wished a cautious, 
 temporising, step-by-step procedure, which would result in 
 getting rid gradually of those most opposed to the new system, 
 and supplying their places with those more compliant. The 
 method actually adopted, however, was neither that of the 
 saintly pastor nor that of the politic ecclesiastic, but a high- 
 handed and reckless method which commended itself to the 
 domineering and inebriated minds of Middleton and his boon- 
 companions. They were under the delusion that by strongly 
 asserting the Royal Supremacy in ecclesiastical causes, by 
 enforcing the abjuration of the Covenants and adhesion to the 
 new system, by making it apparent to the Presbyterian clergy 
 that they were under the power of the civil rulers, and by 
 passing stringent laws accompanied with formidable threats, 
 they would prevent the rise of any serious opposition to the 
 government, however arbitrarily it might choose to act. The 
 whole legislation of the Parliament of 1662, and the whole 
 course of procedure of the Privy Council in connection there- 
 with, were expressions of this delusion. 
 
 That Parliament passed various laws which were insulting 
 and unjust to the Presbyterian part of the nation. The most 
 foolish of them was this Act : * All ministers entering in or 
 since the year 1649, at which time patronages were abolished, 
 are declared to have no right to benefice, stipend, manse or 
 glebe, for this year 1662, or hereafter; but their kirks to be 
 vacant, unless they receive presentation from the patron, and 
 collation from the bishop.' The clergy against whom this 
 enactment was directed, at first took no notice of it ; but the 
 Privy Council decided to enforce compliance. The immediate 
 result was one of those great incidents which nations remember 
 with a legitimate pride. Upwards of three hundred of the 
 ministers sacrificed their worldly all, rather than be untrue 
 
The Cove?! (int. 207 
 
 to their principles. During the closing months of the year 
 1662, over large districts throughout all the Lowlands of 
 Scotland, the parish churches were shut, and the sounds of 
 public worship on the Lord's Day unheard. Edinburgh was 
 left with a single minister, Mr Robert Lawrie of the Tron 
 Church, who, on account of his conformity to Episcopacy, was 
 nicknamed the ' Nest Egg.' The men thus driven out of their 
 charges composed the great body of the younger and most 
 energetic portion of the clergy, and had gained the respect and 
 affection of their flocks. Their places had to be supplied ; and 
 this could only be done with men in all respects inferior to 
 their predecessors. 
 
 These new incumbents, or curates, as they were termed, were, 
 in fact, probably the worst set of clergymen which the Protestant 
 Church in Scotland has ever had. They were, for the most 
 part, needy, ignorant young lads, hurriedly drawn from the 
 northern parts of the kingdom, and thrust into positions for 
 which they had no intellectual, moral, or religious qualifications. 
 More difficult positions to fill, however, than those assigned 
 them can scarcely be conceived. Placed between hostile 
 parishioners, despising and hating them, frequently insulting 
 and occasionally assaulting them, and civil and ecclesiastical 
 superiors, commanding and constraining them to act as in- 
 formers against the disaffected and to aid in carrying out 
 oppressive measures, they would have required the most angelic 
 gentleness to gain the affections of the former, the most heroic 
 courage to resist the tyranny of the latter, and to mediate 
 between the parties a wisdom altogether superhuman. Being 
 only what they were, they, of course, sided with their own 
 supporters. Many of them, having probably no better society, 
 consorted with ' the baser sort of the gentry,' and fell into the 
 vicious habits so prevalent at this time. 
 
 The expulsion of the ministers and the intrusion of the curates 
 led to the parish churches being almost deserted, and to multi- 
 tudes attending religious services, conducted by the ejected 
 
2o8 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 clergy in their own houses or in the open air. How was this 
 fact to be dealt with ? Middleton was not required to consider 
 it, for he was supplanted by Lauderdale and replaced by one 
 of Lauderdale's faction, the Earl of Rothes. Lauderdale had 
 been a leading man among the Covenanters. Had he died 
 before the Restoration, or even before 1663, his life would 
 probably have been in The Scots Worthies, where it might have 
 been a suitable companion picture to that of the Earl of Loudon. 
 He lived too long, however, to have his name handed down to 
 us as that of a saint. He is known to us instead as what he 
 really was, a most unscrupulous and depraved man, hypocritical, 
 avaricious, licentious, a mass of vices associated with the abilities 
 most fitted to make them dangerous and disastrous — a man 
 whose soul was far more repulsive than his body was uncouth. 
 During the last twenty years of his life, he above all men was a 
 shame and curse to Scotland. Rothes was the son of the 
 celebrated Covenanting Earl. Both father and son were bad 
 men. The former made great religious professions and kept on 
 good terms with the clergy, but was a secret libertine. The 
 latter was openly dissolute. He was a favourite with the 
 king, and resembled him both in person and character. He 
 had alike the genial qualities of Charles and his shameful vices. 
 The fall of Middleton and the rise of Lauderdale and Rothes 
 promised little good, and brought none. 
 
 The history which we have to consider is from this point 
 onwards to the Revolution very easy to understand. It is, on 
 the one side, a continuous series of attempts made by the 
 government to force an ecclesiastical system of a kind incon- 
 sistent either with civil or religious liberty on a people to whom 
 it was obnoxious ; and, on the other side, the series of acts 
 by which that people resisted the pressure so long, so unin- 
 terruptedly, and so heavily brought to bear on them. The 
 government during the whole of this time treated the Presby- 
 terian community as if it were a piece of iron which had to be 
 beaten into a particular shape, and it transformed itself, as it 
 
The Covenant. 209 
 
 were, into a hammer and anvil for the purpose; and the 
 question of questions for Scotland was just this : Will hammer 
 and anvil shape the iron, or will the iron break the hammer and 
 anvil ? On a people so circumstanced the chief demand is that 
 it be firm, tenacious, patient, or what the oppressor will call 
 stubborn, dour. That the Covenanters were so, is their glory. 
 
 As the history of the period is so simple, the rapid glance 
 along its course, which is all that my time permits me to 
 give, may be sufficient to shew its general drift. It was 
 resolved to compel attendance on the services of the Episcopal 
 clergy. Accordingly, the parliament of 1663 decreed as follows: 
 ' Hereby it is ordained, that such as ordinarily absent them- 
 selves from their parish kirks on the Lord's Day incur these 
 penalties : each nobleman, gentleman, and heritor, the loss 
 of a fourth of each year's rent ; and each yeoman or tenant, the 
 loss of such a part of their movables as the Lords of Council 
 shall modify, not exceeding a fourth ; and every burgess his 
 liberty, and the fourth of his movables ; and the Council is to 
 execute this Act against all who, after admonition of the 
 minister before two sufficient witnesses, and by him so attested, 
 shall be given up to them, with power to them to inflict further 
 corporal pains, as they shall judge necessary, and to do every 
 other thing for procuring obedience to this Act, and for the 
 executing thereof The Council was quite willing to try its 
 utmost to execute the Act ; indeed, thought it not comprehen- 
 sive enough. It said nothing about women, who then as now 
 formed the largest portion of most religious assemblies, and 
 nothing about the ejected clergy, whose devotions and instruc- 
 tions were preferred to those of the 'curates.' The Council, 
 therefore, supplemented it by resolving that husbands were to 
 be held responsible for the church attendance of their wives, 
 and by enacting that no recusant minister should reside within 
 twenty miles of his old parish, six miles of Edinburgh or any 
 cathedral town, or three miles of any royal burgh, on pain 
 of being treated as a seditious person. With these appendices 
 
 N 
 
210 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 of the Privy Council, the Act of Parliament was not badly 
 entitled to its familiar designation of ' the Bishops' drag-net' 
 
 The penal legislation needed by the new ecclesiastical 
 establishment seemed now tolerably complete. The next 
 problem was how to apply it so as to secure the end its 
 authors desired. This was soon seen to be a most difficult 
 problem. The Privy Council, Court of Justiciary, and lower 
 tribunals were overburdened with the additional work the new 
 legislation imposed upon them. The Court of High Com- 
 mission was revived to deal with ecclesiastical offenders, but 
 the powers given to it were so large and so indefinite, its 
 proceedings were so harsh, and it was altogether so unpopular, 
 that it had speedily to be suppressed. Recourse had to be 
 taken to military law and military force. Troops of soldiers, 
 under the command of a fierce and drunken officer, Sir 
 James Turner, were sent to punish the disaffected Remon- 
 strants of the south-west, and, as was admitted some years 
 afterwards by the Privy Council itself, they conducted them- 
 selves in the most lawless and barbarous manner, fining and 
 plundering promiscuously in whole parishes where there were 
 no persons accused. Their severities occasioned the insur- 
 rection called the Western Rising, which broke out on the 1 2th 
 of November 1666, at Dairy in Galloway, and was completely 
 crushed down on the 28th of that month at RuUion Green. 
 Sir Thomas Dalziel, with his three thousand ' well-appointed 
 horse and foot,' took four or five hours of that ' fair frosty day ' 
 before he could break and scatter the nine hundred almost 
 undisciplined and ill-armed men commanded by Colonel 
 Wallace. The eagerness shewn by the peasants of the neigh- 
 bourhood to capture or kill the fugitives was some evidence 
 that the revolt was premature, and also that Mid-Lothian was 
 far from as warmly Presbyterian in 1666 as it had been not 
 very long before. The prisoners were mercilessly treated 
 by the government. None shewed themselves more cruel 
 and revengeful than the Archbishops of St Andrews and 
 
The Covenant. 211 
 
 Glasgow. None — it is right to add — shewed himself more 
 humane than Dr Wishart, the Bishop of Edinburgh. He 
 had been barbarously persecuted by the Covenanters in their 
 day of power, and yet he not only urged that the prisoners 
 should be forgiven, but daily supplied them with provisions. 
 
 The severities which had caused the insurrection were for a 
 time continued, and even increased and extended. Sir Thomas 
 Dalziel, a man of the sternest stamp, whose reputation as a 
 soldier had been gained by fighting for the Czar against Turks 
 and Tartars, and whose fanaticism for the royal cause almost 
 amounted to frenzy, was sent into the west with his forces, in 
 order to compel the people of Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire to 
 attend their parish churches. He did his work of violence and 
 extortion with zeal and thoroughness, and cut his mark so 
 very deep on these counties that it is hardly yet effaced. It 
 is admitted that he filled the churches. 
 
 The fall of Clarendon in England was followed by a change 
 for the better in Scotland. Rothes was dismissed from office ; 
 Sharp had to confine himself to his diocese ; the expostulations 
 of Leighton and others had some effect on the king ; worthy 
 men like the Earl of Tweeddale and Sir Robert Murray acquired 
 an influence in the conduct of affairs. About forty of the outed 
 ministers who had lived peaceably were indulged, as it was 
 termed, or allowed to go back to their charges, on condition of 
 not discussing public questions. Many of them were among 
 the most esteemed ; two of them, Robert Douglas and George 
 Hutcheson, were among the most eminent of the Presbyterian 
 ministers ; but by a large number of people their acceptance 
 of the Indulgence was regarded as a base compliance with a 
 sinful course of action. On the other hand, Archbishop Burnet 
 of Glasgow and many of the Episcopal clergy were enraged 
 because the Indulgence allowed benefices to be held without a 
 direct acknowledgment of the authority of the bishops. Burnet 
 pushed his opposition to the measure so far that he got ejected 
 himself. Leighton was put in his place, with permission to 
 
212 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 attempt to bring about an acconamodation between the two 
 conflicting parties. 
 
 Accordingly, in the year 1670, there was much negotiating 
 between Leighton and the most considerate and reasonable 
 of the Episcopalian clergy on the one side, and the Presby- 
 terian ministers on the other, with a view to agreement on 
 a scheme of comprehension. There was no difficulty as to 
 the mode of worship, the bishops having in that respect 
 introduced no innovations of consequence. The difficulty was 
 as to bishops themselves. Leighton was willing that they 
 should be little more than perpetual Moderators of the Church 
 courts ; that Presbyterians by conviction should not be required 
 to renounce their opinion about Church government ; that 
 intrants should be ordained at the parish churches and not at 
 the cathedrals ; and at their admissions should not be engaged 
 to any canonical oath. Leighton failed to bring about the 
 result which he desired. The Presbyterian brethren were not 
 prepared to concede even the requirements in his plan. Doubt- 
 less, they had little confidence that what was promised in it 
 would be performed, even if they did accept. Leighton could 
 be implicitly trusted so far as his power went, but to depend on 
 the king's sanction being given merely because it had been 
 pledged, was to trust to a reed very likely to break and wound 
 the hand which leaned on it. Sharp and most of the bishops 
 were keenly opposed to a scheme which implied their loss of 
 so much power and dignity. Leighton was sorely disappointed. 
 It was not long before he renewed a former request to the king 
 to be allowed to resign. With much difficulty he obtained the 
 royal permission; and with great thankfulness he retired to 
 spend the rest of his years in study and devotion at Broadhurst 
 in Sussex. 
 
 The lull in the storm was brief and partial. Lauderdale was 
 the real master of the situation, and he had other ends in view 
 than the peace of the Church or the good of the nation. Under 
 his leading, the Parliament of 1670 passed several atrocious Acts 
 
The Covenant. 213 
 
 against conventicles. Death and confiscation of goods for 
 whoever preached at them ; ruinous fines for whoever attended 
 them ; imprisonment or banishment for all who refused to reveal 
 what they knew regarding them ; five hundred merks reward to 
 any one who captured a conventicle preacher; and severe 
 penalties for having a child baptised by an outed minister, or 
 for being absent for three successive Sabbaths from the parish 
 church, were the terrors now fulminated by law over the land. 
 There was no slackness in the application of the law. Magis- 
 trates were held responsible for conventicles within their burghs. 
 Heritors were punished for meetings on their grounds. Heads 
 of households had to answer for the church attendance of their 
 dependants. Arbitrary and enormous fines were laid upon 
 offending individuals and districts accounted disaffected. They 
 were a most lucrative source of revenue to Lauderdale and his 
 associates, who fattened and rioted on the miseries of their 
 country. Persons who failed to appear when cited by the 
 Council were intercommuned ox outlawed. In 1675, letters of 
 intercommuning were issued against one hundred individuals. 
 To give food, drink, or shelter to those thus excommunicated, 
 or to hold intercourse with them by word or writing, was a 
 criminal offence. Then, as if worthily to crown all this, 
 Lauderdale, in 1678, actually let loose on the West some,ten 
 thousand soldiers, of whom six or seven thousand were 
 Highland clansmen. For three months the Highlanders 
 pillaged at pleasure. They might have done so longer had 
 they not, fortunately perhaps, been unable not only to dis- 
 tinguish between meum and tuum, but between the friends and 
 enemies of the government. The wonder is, considering the 
 animosity which then existed between Highlanders and Low- 
 landers, that they did not murder as well as plunder. 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding all these devices and eftbrts of the 
 government, conventicles were not put down. On the con- 
 trary, the very means employed to suppress them converted 
 them into truly formidable assemblages. Small private meet- 
 
2 14 Sf ales' Lectures. 
 
 ings, little local gatherings, had to be abandoned ; but in their 
 place sprang up large armed conventicles to which people 
 came from great distances, at which many wore weapons and 
 were ready to repel force with force, and which were addressed 
 only by the most resolute of the Covenanting preachers — men 
 who saw in King Charles and his ministers only the enemies of 
 King Jesus — who would hear of no compromises, who regarded 
 the indulged as traitors, and attendance on their ministry as 
 a sin, and in whose discourses pathetic and fervent offers of the 
 Gospel were mingled with stern denunciations of their rulers and 
 the prelates. Conventicles of this sort were found to have 
 strong attractions. A passion for their excitements grew up and 
 spread. No government, of course, can be reasonably blamed 
 for attempting to suppress armed conventicles. The condem- 
 nation of the government of Charles II. is that it so acted as to 
 create them. 
 
 The tempers of the persecuted had by this time become 
 embittered and dangerous. The Covenanters were from the 
 first, on the whole, a stern and harsh race of religionists. They 
 never acknowledged, either in theory or practice, the principle 
 of toleration of others, although they perceived so clearly their 
 own right to liberty. In the days of their ascendency they had 
 slaughtered, imprisoned, and despoiled their opponents, on the 
 ground that it was a plain dictate both of Scripture and of 
 conscience that those who resisted the cause of Christ should 
 be punished by the law. The Protesters, in particular, had 
 always vehemently contended against leniency towards non- 
 Covenanters. It was, accordingly, only too natural that many 
 of the harassed field-conventiclers should come to the con- 
 clusion that their persecutors might righteously be cut off with- 
 out law, and that no mercy ought to be shewn to the active 
 enemies of the truth. It was by a band of men possessed with 
 this conviction that Archbishop Sharp was murdered on Magus 
 Moor, near St Andrews, on 3d May 1679. 
 
 No person was so abhorred by the Covenanters as the 
 
The Covenant. 215 
 
 Primate. They believed him to have basely betrayed the 
 Presbyterian Church ; to have been the chief instigator of the 
 cruel measures taken against the faithful ; to be a sorcerer and 
 a man of flagitious life. In this belief there was much 
 exaggeration. He meanly deserted the Presbyterian cause, 
 but proof is wanting that he betrayed it. He took a pro- 
 minent part in the enactment and execution of the laws passed 
 against the Covenanters, but his influence in this connection 
 was not nearly so great as that of several of the lay lords. 
 The history of the period would probably have been little 
 different if he had never been born. His private life was 
 irreproachable ; the statements to the contrary are plainly 
 calumnious fabrications. He was not a moral monster; nor 
 was he a man to be morally admired. He was self-seeking, 
 scheming, unforgiving ; he was too pliant where principle was 
 concerned, and too persistent where mere interest was con- 
 cerned ; he fawned on the strong, and was unsympathetic 
 towards the weak. His assassination had been attempted as 
 early as 1668 by a fanatic named Mitchell; and one of the 
 individuals who took part in his murder on Magus Moor con- 
 fessed to have twice previously sought an opportunity to 
 slay him. The circumstances connected with that murder 
 are known in their minute details, but willingly we turn away 
 from so foul a deed so foully done. The assassins — of whom 
 Hackston of Rathillet and his brother-in-law, Balfour of 
 Kinloch, better known as Burley, were the leaders — escaped 
 to the West and joined themselves to those who approved 
 of their action. 
 
 On the 29th of May — the anniversary of the Restoration — 
 some eighty horsemen, headed by Robert Hamilton, brother 
 of Sir William Hamilton of Preston, entered Rutherglen, 
 extinguished the bonfires blazing in honour of the king, 
 denounced and burned the Acts of Parliament in favour of 
 Episcopacy, and afiixed to the market-cross a document 
 entitled * The Declaration and Testimony of the true Presby- 
 
2i6 Sf Oiks' Lectures. 
 
 terian Party in Scotland,' Three days afterwards — June i — 
 these and other armed men to the number of several hundreds, 
 among whom some, such as Hackston, Balfour, Hall of Haugh- 
 head, and young William Cleland, possessed decided capacity 
 for fighting, were at a large conventicle at Drumclog, when 
 John Graham of Claverhouse with his dragoons came upon 
 them. But, as he himself writes, his meeting with them was 
 'very little to his advantage.' Although a trained soldier, he 
 was new to this kind of work — probably underrated the martial 
 qualities of his opponents — certainly fought rashly and in 
 ignorance of the nature of the ground — and was outgener- 
 aled, and so badly beaten, that he had to flee on a wounded 
 horse, hotly pursued, leaving thirty-six troopers dead, while 
 the Covenanters lost only three of their number. Mr Robert 
 Hamilton, who commanded the Covenanters, was of quite 
 the same way of thinking as the murderers of Sharp. It 
 appeared to him to be plainly the Divine will that ' Babel's 
 brats ' should be destroyed. He put to death with his own 
 hand one of the prisoners, and was greatly grieved that, 
 contrary to his express orders, five others were let go. The 
 Covenanters, hopeful that the hour of deliverance was near, 
 flocked from all sides to his standard. Ere a week elapsed, 
 he had, according to his own account, ' betwixt five and 
 six thousand horse and foot drawn up on the moor besouth 
 Glasgow, all as one man and of one mind, to own the Rugland 
 testimony against all opposers.' They were not long ' as one 
 man, and of one mind.' Bitter dissensions broke out among 
 them regarding the Indulgence, although none of the indulged 
 ministers joined them. Their camp was a scene of ecclesiastical 
 wrangHng. They appear to have been on the point of breaking 
 up into two parties and separating, when they learned that the 
 Duke of Monmouth, with an army twice as strong as their own 
 in numbers, and vastly superior in all military respects, was close 
 at hand. No one among them, probably, was capable of 
 handling with soldierly efficiency so large a body of men as 
 
Tlie Covenant. 217 
 
 seven or eight thousand. Mr Hamilton, their nominal com- 
 mander-in-chief, was certainly quite incompetent for such a 
 task. Yet he must havelhad a strong expectation of victory, 
 seeing that he allowed a banner to be carried which bore on it 
 in scarlet letters the words, * No quarter for the active enemies 
 of the Covenant,' and had a large gibbet erected in the midst of 
 his camp, with a cartful of new ropes at the foot of it. No 
 opportunity, however, presented itself either for the refusal of 
 quarter or the use of the gibbet and rope. The Covenanters 
 acted at Bothwell with such a want of sense and vigour, that, 
 had it not been for the brave fighting of the three hundred 
 under Hackston at the bridge, the affair of June 22, 1679, 
 might have been called a rout, but could not have been called a 
 battle. Had the merciless Dalziel, and not the humane Mon- 
 mouth, commanded the royal forces, it would in all probability 
 have been a massacre. About four hundred persons were slain 
 in flight ; above a thousand were taken prisoners, of whom seven 
 were executed, while the others were confined for months in the 
 Greyfriars Churchyard ; and then those who consented to acknow- 
 ledge the rising in which they had ^been engaged as rebellion, 
 and to promise to keep the peace in future, were released, 
 while those who refused were shipped off to the plantations. 
 
 The schism which was on the point of breaking out at 
 Bothwell, split altogether the Covenanting ranks soon after- 
 wards, and was widened and aggravated by the grant of a new 
 indulgence on terms which none of the extreme party could 
 regard without abhorrence. This party now stood strictly and 
 sternly apart from those of more moderate views, and uncom- 
 promisingly proclaimed and carried out its own principles. 
 Donald Cargill was its oldest leader ; Richard Cameron, his son 
 in the faith, supported it with a fervent zeal and heroic courage 
 which led to its being called Cameronian ; young James Renwick 
 caught up its banner when it dropped from Cameron's dying 
 hand, and guided its Secret Societies mth a rare genius for 
 organisation and government. 
 
2i8 Sf Gz/es' Lectures. 
 
 Never did men cling more consistently and tenaciously to 
 their creed, or suffer more for the sake of conscience than the 
 members of this party— the Hillmen, the Wanderers, the Faithful 
 Remnant, the Wild Whigs, the Cameronians, &c., as they were 
 variously designated. Whatever may have been their faults, 
 their fidelity to conviction has been seldom equalled in the 
 history of the world. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt 
 as to the chief source of their steadfastness and strength. It is 
 impossible to read the reports of their sermons, or any of the 
 writings which they penned, without being impressed by the 
 obvious sincerity, thoroughness, and assuredness of their faith 
 in God and Christ — by the directness, self-consciousness, and 
 closeness of their sense of communion and personal relationship 
 to Jehovah. There may be differences of opinion as to how 
 far their piety was at various points enlightened, but a denial 
 that their piety was singularly real and operative must be trace- 
 able either to ignorance or to religious unsusceptibility. 
 
 They were not content merely to resist certain measures and 
 defy certain commands of the government They entirely 
 renounced allegiance to it. They held themselves to be bound 
 by none of its laws. They declared war against it. They 
 proclaimed that the king, by his covenant-breaking, vicious life, 
 and tyrannical rule, had \ forfeited the throne. They taught 
 that he and other persecutors might justly be put to death. 
 Hackston of Rathillet, until his capture at Ayrsmoss, was 
 a leading man among them, the honoured companion of 
 Cameron and Cargill. Their preachers hesitated not to repre- 
 sent God as calling upon persons of all ranks and classes to 
 imitate Jael and Ehud, by executing judgment on the wicked 
 rulers of the time. Mr Forman expressed the same doctrine 
 clearly and concisely by an inscription on his knife: 'This is 
 to cut the throats of tyrants.' Most of the party were willing 
 to die rather than acknowledge the killing of Sharp to have 
 been murder, or that it would be a crime to kill the king and 
 his brother. 
 
The Covenant. 219 
 
 These resolute men took the steps which they considered 
 requisite to make known their position towards the govern- 
 ment. When Hall of Haughhead was killed in a scuffle at 
 Queensferry, 3d June 1680, there was found on his person an 
 unsigned paper, the rough draft of a public declaration, in 
 which the king and his associates in the government were 
 solemnly rejected, monarchy repudiated, and an administration 
 of God-fearing judges proposed. On the 21st of the same 
 month, twenty men, amongst whom were Donald Cargill, 
 Richard Cameron and his brother, and Hackston, entered 
 the old burgh of Sanquhar on horseback, rode with drawn 
 swords to the cross, and there proclaimed : ' We, for ourselves 
 and all that will adhere to us, the representatives of the true 
 Presbyterian Church and covenanted nation of Scotland, do, 
 by these presents, disown ' Charles Stuart, who has been 
 reigning, or rather tyrannising, on the throne of Britain these 
 years bygone, as having any right, title to, or interest in the 
 crown of Scotland, or government, 'as forfeited several years 
 since, by his perjury and breach of Covenant with God and His 
 Kirk, and by his tyranny and breach of the fundamental rules 
 of government in matters civil. . . . Also we declare a war 
 with such a tyrant and usurper, and all the men of these 
 practices, as enemies to our Lord Jesus Christ and His cause 
 and covenant. . . . And we hope, after this, none will 
 blame us, or ^offend at our rewarding those that are against 
 us as they have done to us, as the Lord gives opportunity.' 
 Just a month afterwards — July 22 — Cameron was slain and 
 Hackston taken prisoner by the dragoons of Bruce of Earlshall 
 at Ayrsmoss. Two months later, at Torwood in Stirlingshire, 
 Cargill 'excommunicated, cast out of the true Church, and 
 delivered up unto Satan,' King Charles, the Duke of York, the 
 Duke of Monmouth, the Duke of Lauderdale, the Duke of 
 Rothes, Sir George Mackenzie (King's Advocate), and Thomas 
 Dalziel of Binns. In January 1682, a band of fifty armed 
 Society men entered Lanark, burned the Test and Succession 
 
220 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Acts, and published a declaration of their principles. In 
 November 1684, a celebrated Apologetic Declaration was 
 affixed to several market-crosses and parish churches in 
 Galloway, Dumfriesshire, Ayrshire, and Lanarkshire, in which 
 warning was given that all who took part in the work of 
 persecution would be regarded as enemies to God and His 
 covenanted work, and punished as such. ' Let not any think 
 that (our God assisting us) we will be so slack-handed in time 
 coming to put matters in execution, as heretofore we have 
 been.' ' Call to your remembrance, all that is in peril is not 
 lost, and all that is delayed is not forgiven.' 
 
 The strict Covenanters looked upon those Presbyterians who 
 were not prepared to go the same length as themselves as 
 time-serving and hypocritical. They denounced the indulged 
 ministers more frequently and more severely than the curates. 
 They represented attendance at their meetings as a sin no less 
 ruinous to the soul than theft or adultery. This was just what 
 was to be expected from men with their convictions and in 
 their circumstances. We ought, however, to beware of being 
 misled, as many have been, by their denunciations of the more 
 moderate brethren. The indulged ministers may have felt 
 quite as conscientiously that the preachers who held armed 
 conventicles and declared war against the government were 
 going too far, as these preachers felt that the ministers did not 
 go far enough. There was need for both parties. Just as the 
 Italy of our own generation required, in order to obtain her 
 unity and liberty, not only uncompromising and heroic enthusi- 
 asts like Mazzini and Garibaldi, not only martyrs like Ugo 
 Bassi and the brothers Bandieri, but watchful, calculating, and 
 prudent politicians like Cavour and his friends, so the Scotland 
 of the Restoration period needed, in order that she might be pre- 
 pared for and profited by the Revolution epoch, alike her idealists 
 and her moderates. The wandering Hillmen rendered services 
 which well deserve national gratitude; but if all the Presby- 
 terians of Scotland had been as they, Scottish Presbyterianism 
 
TTie Covejiant. 221 
 
 would have rashly taken up the sword, and might have perished 
 by the sword. It is right to remember what we owe to them 
 for having resisted unto death the encroachments of the Civil 
 Power on the rights of the Church and the tyranny of the king 
 over the community ; but it is not right to forget that they also 
 strove for much which was unjust and unattainable. Cargill, 
 Cameron, Renwick, and their followers, entertained not a doubt 
 that it was God's will that all in these lands, from the king to 
 the peasant, should be made subject to the Covenants ; they 
 had no firmer conviction. Who can believe so now ? If the 
 course of Divine Providence, as traceable in the history of the 
 last two hundred years, afibrds any indication of the Divine 
 will, thai was Jiot the Divine will. To have imposed these 
 Covenants on the nation at the Revolution, or at any period 
 since the Revolution, could manifestly have only led to wrongs 
 and cruelties as great as were those against which the Cove- 
 nanters protested and struggled. 
 
 Charles II. died February 6, 1685. Few men have had such 
 opportunities of conferring happiness on others, and leaving 
 behind him a loved and honoured name, and few men have 
 been more richly endowed with the qualities fitted to secure 
 popularity and affection ; but through yielding to self-indulgence, 
 and allowing the lusts of the flesh to overrule the higher 
 principles of the spirit, he so wasted his advantages, so misused 
 his gifts, so degenerated in nature, so sank into the slough of 
 vice, that it is hard to find in history a life more painful to 
 contemplate, more ignoble, depraved, and mischievous than 
 his. The last year of his reign was, perhaps, that during 
 which the persecuted Presbyterians of Scotland suffered most. 
 Things came to such a pass that the most awful of judicial 
 functions, along with complete executive 'power, was intrusted 
 to common soldiers. On mere suspicion, men could be arrested 
 in the fields or on the highways by the humblest agents of the 
 government, and, on refusal or failure to answer in a particular 
 way certain questions, immediately shot. The transference of 
 
222 St Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 the sceptre to the hands of his brother, James VII., brought 
 little improvement. The three years of this monarch's reign 
 were also 'killing times.' The Acts of indemnity and of 
 toleration which he published did not prevent, and were 
 not meant to prevent, the slaughter of Cameronians. Claver- 
 house, Grierson of Lagg, Bruce of Earlshall, and others, engaged 
 in that work with an activity and rigour which caused them to 
 be regarded as almost demons incarnate. That much which 
 passes for history in regard both to the persecutors and the 
 persecuted has no claim to the character must, I believe, be 
 admitted. The loads of martyrological tradition collected by 
 Wodrow and other writers require to be far more thoroughly 
 and critically examined and weighed than they have yet been 
 before historians can safely use them. The common estimate 
 of their historical worth appeajs to me to be far too high. 
 Leaving them altogether aside, however, there remains ample 
 evidence in the official records of the government itself, and 
 in the still extant letters of its agents and officers, that the 
 violence inflicted and the suffering endured in this period 
 of persecution were enormous. 
 
 The hour of deliverance came at length. With the Revolu- 
 tion, night fled and day appeared. The main cause of the 
 Revolution was neither the sufferings nor the strivings of 
 the Presbyterians in Scotland or the Nonconformists in 
 England. It was fear of the spread and triumph of Romanism. 
 The nation bore with strange equanimity the evils inflicted 
 by the last two Stuart kings so long and in so far as they 
 were wrought in support of the arbitrary personal power of the 
 monarch and in favour of Episcopacy ; but as soon as there 
 appeared to be serious danger of the Royal Supremacy being 
 applied to the establishment of Romanism, all classes of the 
 people arose in determined antagonism, combining their powers 
 and efforts with wonderful rapidity, and with a force so irresist- 
 ible that William of Orange, instead of having to cut his 
 way to the throne of Britain, had merely to march to it in 
 
The Covenant. 223 
 
 a triumphal procession. As soon as the Church of England, 
 alarmed at the measures taken by James in favour of Roman- 
 ism, turned suddenly and in its collective strength against 
 him, his fate was sealed. The action then taken by the Church 
 of England was what more than anything else insured the 
 fall of Episcopacy and the rise of Presbytery a second time 
 in Scotland. Even in Scotland, hatred of Romanism was a 
 much stronger passion than love of Presbytery \ immeasurably 
 stronger than admiration of the Covenants. The most servile 
 courtiers and cruel persecutors among the Scottish nobles and 
 judges shewed an independence and sensitiveness in regard 
 to Acts and measures constructively favouring Romanism 
 which were little to have been anticipated. The example 
 of Edinburgh itself is instructive. Throughout the whole 
 period of the persecution it sided with the Anti-Covenanters, 
 although the execution of a sufferer like young M'Kail might 
 cause an evanescent and exceptional outburst of human 
 sympathy. It turned out howling mobs to insult the prisoners 
 brought into it after the battles of Rullion Green and Both- 
 well Bridge. At the same time, it was intensely Protestant, 
 or, at least, intensely Anti-Romanist. Neither the presence 
 of the Duke of York nor fear of the fury of General Dalziel 
 could keep its students, aided by its apprentices, from 
 burning an effigy of the Pope ; its baker-boys would pelt 
 with mud a pervert Countess of Perth, and a mild attempt 
 of the authorities at punishment of the offence was followed 
 by manifestations of resentment which might have been more 
 usefully displayed in rescuing a martyr at the Grassmarket. 
 Long noted as one of the most turbulent towns of Europe, it 
 was exceptionally quiet from 1660 to 1690; but its one great 
 riot during the time was on occasion of the sacking and demoli- 
 tion of the Chapel-Royal at Holyrood, into which James had 
 introduced Roman Catholic worship. The nation was resolved 
 not even to tolerate Romanism. James was resolved not only 
 to tolerate but to favour it. Being the weaker party, he fell. 
 
224 Sf Giles* Lectures. 
 
 On the fall of James, the outraged Covenanters and oppressed 
 peasantry of the west of Scotland rose in mobs and drove the 
 Episcopal clergy from their parishes. This ' rabbling of the 
 curates ' began on Christmas Day, 1688, and lasted for some 
 months. About two hundred persons were thus expelled. No 
 lives were lost ; but this must rather be ascribed to the curates 
 having almost no support, and consequently making scarcely 
 any resistance, than to the self-restraint of the rioters. In order 
 not to judge too harshly the ' rabbling of the curates ' in 1688, 
 we must remember the ejection of the ministers in 1661 ; but 
 in order not to judge of it too leniently, we must also remember 
 that the ejection of the ministers had been itself preceded by 
 the expulsion of the Episcopal clergy in 1639, and that one 
 reason why there were so few Non-Covenanters in certain 
 districts of the West was that the war-committees of the Cove- 
 nanters in 1640 had driven so many of them away and left them 
 nothing to which to return. 
 
 During the whole period which has been under our consider- 
 ation, the economical resources of the country, as well as litera- 
 ture, science, and art, were almost entirely neglected. Yet 
 we shall err, I believe, if we deem it to have been either an 
 unnecessary or unfruitful period. Nations, like individuals, 
 cannot live by bread alone, or by the truths of science and the 
 comforts and charms of art alone. Nations, like individuals, 
 if they will only look thoughtfully over their histories, will not 
 fail to acknowledge that the times which they could least have 
 spared have been their times of affliction. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT, 1690 to 1707 a.d.^ 
 
 By the Rev. Robert Herbert Story, D.D., Minister of Rosneath. 
 
 T F Episcopal benediction and subserviency could have saved 
 ■*• King James VIL, he would have been saved from the 
 consequences of his own fanaticism and tyranny. Two days 
 before the Dutch deliverer landed atTorbay, the Scotch bishops 
 were engaged at Edinburgh in concocting a letter to the king, 
 whom they poetically addressed as 'the darling of heaven,' 
 
 ^ The authorities for the period of the Revolution and the Union, to which 
 the general reader may be referred, are Wodrow's History of the Sufferings, 
 Analecta, and Correspondence ; Dalryniple's Memoirs ; Burnet's History of 
 His Own Time ; Defoe's Memoirs of the Church of Scotland ; with the 
 recent histories of Mr Hill Burton and Dr Cunningham. So much of the 
 same gi-ound is traversed in the present writer's William Carstares : a 
 Character and Career of the Revolutionary Epoch, that at two or three points 
 short passages therefrom have been adapted to the uses of this lecture. 
 Readers, who wish to make a more minute acquaintance with the period, may 
 consult the Coltness Collections ; the Caldioell Papers ; the Leven and Melville 
 Papers ; t\iQ Lockhart Papers; the March mont Papers; and the Carstares 
 State Papers. 
 
2 26 Sf Gibes'' Lectures. 
 
 assuring him of their unquenchable loyalty, praying God to 
 give him 'the hearts of his subjects and the necks of his 
 enemies,' and promising to do their best to promote in all 
 his subjects *an intemerable and steadfast allegiance' to his 
 Majesty ' as an essential part of their religion.' The prayers of 
 the right reverend fathers in God did not obtain for his Majesty 
 the two impossible gifts they besought ; nor could all the 
 devotion of their order avail to thwart the will of a nation, 
 whose strongest passion, burning most strongly in its noblest 
 hearts, was a zeal for liberty — for liberty of conscience and 
 of life. At the root of the long struggle against the 
 manifold misgovernment of the Stuarts, as of all the least 
 practical fanaticisms of the Hillmen, with their visionary 
 Covenant, lay a deep conviction of the human right of 
 personal freedom and personal responsibility, compared with 
 which all assertions of divine right, whether of kings or prelates, 
 were weak as water — strong for a time, no doubt, in the 
 possession and unscrupulous use of brute force, but weak in 
 all elements of moral strength, the only strength that endures, 
 because having in it some measure of that will of God which 
 ' abideth for ever.' King James fell in spite of his bishops' 
 prayers ; and his system of absolutism in Church and State fell 
 with him. The convulsion which overthrew him was not a 
 political revolution merely. It was an upheaval and change of 
 the whole national life. The motive power in it was a religious, 
 more than a political, force. It is not too much to say that of 
 all the factors in the Revolution of 1688, Scottish Presbytery 
 was the most radical, the most indomitable, the most tri- 
 umphant ; Scottish Presbytery, not simply, or mainly as the 
 opponent of Prelacy, but as the representative and champion of 
 the rights and liberties of the people. 
 
 Since those days in the summer of 1639, when the Scots 
 arrny under Leslie encamped upon Dunse Law, until the hour 
 that saw King James a refugee in France, the Ark of the Cove- 
 nant of civil and religious liberty had been guarded by the 
 
The Revolution Settlement. 237 
 
 strong hands of that inextinguishable Presbyterian remnant, 
 whom no diplomacy could cajole, and no persecution extirpate. 
 Liberty, dear to them, as to all people of their blood and race, 
 was specially dear because the possession of it was bound up in 
 the same bundle with the most sacred treasures of their religion. 
 What the Pilgrim Fathers had crossed the Atlantic to find 
 beyond the seas, they were resolved to attain at home — freedom 
 of life and thought ; above all, ' freedom to worship God.' 
 Their detestation of a certain order in the Church was no 
 jealousy of hierarchical rank. It grew up in them and possessed 
 them, too wholly perhaps, because they saw in that order the 
 most offensive stumbling-block in the way of the triumph of 
 their noble cause. 
 
 It is altogether an error to believe that preference for a 
 non-liturgical service was implied in the popular enmity to 
 the Prelacy, which got its death-blow in 1688. The error owes 
 some of its vitality to the magic pen of Sir Walter Scott ; but it 
 is mainly traceable to that general ignorance of Church History, 
 which allows people to suppose that because the present service 
 of the Church of Scotland is non-liturgical, it has always been 
 so ; and that one of the chief differences between Episcopacy 
 and Presbytery is that the one does, and the other does not, 
 use forms of prayer. Like the Reformed Churches of the 
 Continent, our National Church possessed, as you have already 
 heard, its national Liturgy for nearly one hundred years after 
 its reformation. It surrendered that invaluable possession to 
 the sinister influence of English Puritanism ; and the Prelacy 
 of the Restoration made no effort to recall the unhappy 
 forfeiture. The Revolution found Scotland without a Liturgy 
 either among the established Episcopalians, or the disestab- 
 lished Presbyterians. ' We,' says Sir George Mackenzie, speak- 
 ing of the former — ' we had no ceremonies, surplice, altars, cross 
 in baptism, nor the meanest of those things which would be 
 allowed in England by the Dissenters, in way of accommo- 
 dation.' Such scraps of liturgical order as the use of the 
 
2 28 S^ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Lord's Prayer and the Gloria Patri, the disuse of which had 
 vexed the soul of Henderson more than forty years before, 
 might be found among some of the Episcopahans ; but in 
 general, as far as ritual was concerned, there was as little to 
 distinguish the Presbyterian service from the Episcopal, as 
 there is, at the present day, to distinguish the service of the 
 average Free Church congregation from that of the average 
 parish church, perhaps not so much. In the parish churches, 
 at the date of the Revolution, the Sunday's service commonly 
 was begun by the precentor's reading, after the manner of the 
 earlier ' Reader,' two or three chapters of the Bible ; after 
 which the curate entered the pulpit, and a psalm was sung. 
 Then followed an extempore prayer, and a sermon, generally 
 unread. After the sermon there was a second prayer, con- 
 cluding with our Lord's Prayer. Then came another psalm, 
 and the benediction ; and this was all. In the meeting-houses 
 of the Indulged, the service was the same, except that the Lord's 
 Prayer had no place. The Holy Communion was administered 
 by the curate, as well as by the ' ouLed ' or the ' indulged ' 
 minister, to recipients who sat about a table, and never thought 
 of kneeling. At prayer, the attitude seems to have been sitting 
 too. During the sermon, the Presbyterians were in the dis- 
 respectful habit of putting on their hats or bonnets. I do not 
 know if the Episcopalians exhibited the same irreverence, or 
 not. The prolonged services preliminary to the Communion, 
 on the Fast-day and Saturday — the lengthy ' preachings ' in 
 the church and from the ' tent ' on the Sunday, and the thanks- 
 givings of the Monday — were unknown among the Episcopalians, 
 as they were among the earlier Presbyterians. They originated 
 with the Protesters, and established themselves pretty generally 
 throughout the Church, soon after the Revolution. 
 
 The ritual of the conventicle was naturally subject to no 
 law. The order which I have described as that of the usual 
 Sunday's service, you will recognise as virtually in agreement 
 with that prescribed in the Book of Common Order and in the 
 
TJte Revolution Settlement. 229 
 
 Westminster Directory, which is the basis of our more comely 
 and elaborate usage in the present day. It lacked the liturgical 
 element common to the Reformed Churches, and it excluded 
 the people from that large share in the service, which adds 
 unction and power to the inflexible devotional forms of the 
 Anglican Church. Its weak point was the almost absolute 
 power it confided to the minister, who, knowing no guide and 
 no restraint except that of a general but not authoritative 
 custom, could deal with the service in all its constituent parts 
 pretty much as he chose. The traditions of clays when, filled 
 by Knox or Henderson, the pulpit had been a great political 
 force — of the times of persecution, when the most stirring call to 
 the defiance and resistance of a degrading tyranny had been 
 the voice of the outlawed preacher on the bare hillside — 
 were cherished in an age when preaching had lost its former 
 political importance, and when its fiery testimony for freedom 
 was no longer needed. The preacher still thought it fair 
 and right to discuss in the pulpit all questions of public and 
 local interest ] but when such discussion no more afliected 
 national policy or involved personal danger, the independence 
 which had before been courageous and noble could not retain 
 that character. The pulpit was too often degraded to the 
 uses of personal ill-will, sectarian spite, or professional intoler- 
 ance ; and, for a time at least, forfeited much of its power 
 to edify and elevate the public mind. 
 
 The establishment of Episcopacy had wrought as little change 
 upon the subordinate government of the Church as upon its ritual. 
 That court of the Church which has generally been regarded as 
 the most prominent feature of Presbytery — the Kirk-session — 
 lasted throughout the whole of the Caroline Prelacy. Not only 
 so ; but King Charles, moved possibly by a pious admiration of 
 the discipline of that court, had, on finding that the eldership 
 was not a popular oflice under the ' curates,' issued a proclama- 
 tion empowering them to make their own selection of elders in 
 their respective parishes, and ordering those so chosen to 
 
230 Sf Gt'/es' Lediins. 
 
 accept ofifice, within fifteen days, 'under pain of rebellion.' 
 The second court of the Church, the Presbytery, continued to 
 hold its constitutional position and to discharge its ordinary 
 duties, with the exception — no doubt, a radical exception — of 
 ordaining candidates for orders. The Presbytery examined the 
 candidates, but referred their ordination to the bishop, who also 
 had the right of nominating the moderator. The Synods met 
 as usual, but under the presidency of the bishop. There was 
 no General Assembly. The ordinary parochial and Presby- 
 terial government of the Church went on, as though the 
 bishops had not existed. The restoration of Presbyterianism 
 required to make no alteration beyond abolishing the bishops, 
 and reopening the General Assembly. 
 
 Neither was it called to effect any change in doctrine. 
 The Westminster Confession, which had been accepted by 
 the General Assembly of 1647, ^^^d since that date retained, 
 without dispute, such ecclesiastical authority as that accept- 
 ance implied, and had never been repudiated or renounced 
 in any of the voluminous oaths which the government of 
 Charles demanded from the clergy. The Revolution found it 
 where the Restoration had found it. On the ritual, the sub- 
 ordinate government, and the doctrine of the Church, twenty- 
 six years of Prelacy had left no mark. If anything could add 
 emphasis to the national repudiation of that Prelacy, it is this 
 simple fact. 
 
 ' What have I done to be so loved ?' said Louis XV. — Louis 
 
 * the well-beloved ' — when he rose from his sick-bed at Metz. 
 The poor perplexed bishops of the Stuarts might have asked : 
 
 * What have we done to be so hated ? ' as they gathered their 
 tattered skirts around them and fled into those coverts from 
 popular ill-will, which justified Dundee's sarcasm that they had 
 become ' the Kirk invisible.' I find the answer in the words of 
 the most dispassionate and sagacious of English historians — 
 Henry Hallam — who, reviewing the Scotch Episcopacy of the 
 seventeenth century, in calm and philosophical survey, says : 
 
The Revolution Settlement. 231 
 
 * There was as clear a case of " forfeiture " in the Scots Epis- 
 copal Church as in the royal family of Stuart. ... It was very 
 possible that Episcopacy might be of Apostolical institution; 
 but for this institution houses had been burned and fields laid 
 waste, and the Gospel had been preached in wildernesses, and 
 its ministers had been shot in their prayers, and husbands had 
 been murdered before their wives, and virgins had been defiled, 
 and many had died by the executioner, and by massacre, and in 
 imprisonment, and in exile and slavery, and women had been 
 tied to stakes on the sea-shore till the tide rose to overflow 
 them, and some had been tortured and mutilated; it was a 
 religion of the boots and the thumbscrew, which a good man 
 must be very cool-blooded indeed, if he did not hate and reject 
 from the hands that offered it. For, after all, it is much more 
 certain that the Supreme Being abhors cruelty and persecution 
 than that he has set up bishops to have a superiority over 
 presbyters.' 
 
 The representatives of a vicious system may sometimes be 
 able, by their own personal character, or genius, or merits, to 
 redeem their office from popular odium and contempt ; but the 
 prelates of 1688 had no such power. Of the twelve deprived 
 bishops, none could raise a voice to which the nation would 
 listen, or exert the slightest sway over the turbid currents 
 of revolution. There was not one of them round whom the 
 people of his own diocese, even, would rally. 'And shall 
 Trelawney die ? ' chanted the Mendip miners, when they heard 
 that James had sent their bishop to the Tower : 
 
 ' Then twenty thousand under ground will know the reason why.' 
 
 The incarceration of all the bishops in Scotland would have 
 evoked no such loyal sentiment, in any region between Whit- 
 horn and Kirkwall. Not a hundred of their countrymen could 
 have been found to strike a blow for them. They fell, and no 
 one held out a hand to lift them up. They were hustled out 
 of Church and Senate, and no m.an bade them stay, or said 
 
i^ii St Giles' Lectures. 
 
 God bless them, as they and their hated order and tarnished 
 honours passed away. 
 
 The mind and conscience of the country felt relieved when 
 they were gone. Men breathed more freely. It became 
 easier to believe in that old article of the Reformers' creed — a 
 divine government and a righteous Kingdom of Christ — when 
 the mean curate, with his weekly list of defaulters from his 
 Sunday's services, no longer sought the alliance of the sergeant 
 of dragoons to coerce his recreant flock ; when the victims of 
 the boot and the thumbscrew were no longer watched, during 
 their torture in the Laigh Parliament House, by the cruel eyes 
 of the right reverend fathers in God of the Privy Council. 
 
 The Scotch people had, at the time of the Reformation, and 
 for several years after it, no fanatical hatred of Prelacy — not even 
 any bitter jealousy of it. Knox himself exercised his ministry, for 
 a time, in the English Church ; and when asked by the Privy 
 Council to explain his refusal to accept the preferment offered 
 him by King Edward, he never alleged that Anglican Prelacy 
 was at the bottom of it. The early Scottish Reformers com- 
 municated, without scruple, in the Church of England, and in 
 their own worship used her Liturgy. The altered feelings of a 
 later age owed their birth to the fact, emphasised by the Duke 
 of Argyll in his Presbytery Exammed, that while the Scottish 
 Prelacy of the Regencies was without any principle, Scottish 
 Presbytery was not. ' It was founded on passionate conviction ; 
 and every opposition it encountered, springing from motives 
 less earnest than its own, tended to strengthen that conviction, 
 and give to all its principles additional value in its sight. If, 
 in the main, those principles were great and true positively, 
 every scrap of them appeared great and true by contrast.' This, 
 true of the earlier, was doubly true of the later. Prelacy. Its 
 existence had been an outrage on the liberties of a people 
 whose passion for liberty had sometimes raged with even too 
 fierce a flame. Its overthrow lifted the weight of a nightmare- 
 like oppression from the national breast. 
 
The Revolution Settlement. 
 
 At the same time, we must not overlook the fact that, 
 by the end of the twenty-six years of the Carohne Prelacy, 
 the policy of the Stuarts and the bishops had not altogether 
 laboured in vain, or spent its strength for nought. Hanging, 
 shooting, torturing, banishing, imprisonment in foul dun- 
 geons, confiscation of goods, ruinous fines, all the agencies 
 of a reign of terror, had done their part. Persecution had 
 rooted out of the population thousands — how many thou- 
 sands, it is hard to tell now — of its best and bravest — had 
 cowed many into a sullen submission. Many others, moved 
 probably by dread of new changes, or under the influence 
 of the Court, or finding Episcopacy most in accordance with 
 their political principles, had become the partisans of that 
 form of government. The Revolution Settlement met with 
 little or no favour among the nobles and gentry, that had been 
 the minions or adherents of the Court; among the party 
 that hated popular rights, and believed in the jus divirmm of 
 kings ; and among the half-civilised Highland clans, many 
 of whom had no religion but their loyalty to their chief, and 
 among whose glens and islands the Reformation had left not 
 a few savage retreats, as wholly Papal as the passes of the 
 Apennines or the Pyrenees. 
 
 The only Lowland region (besides some districts of Aber- 
 deenshire, Banffshire, and Moray) where Episcopacy had 
 gained a decided hold on the general community, was that 
 which stretches from the Tay to the Dee, between the 
 Grampians and the ocean ; a region even then still liable 
 to the incursions of the Gael, and, except in the towns of 
 the sea-board, exhibiting but a moderate standard of civilisa- 
 tion. The country from the Tay to the Border — and espe- 
 cially the well-peopled and strong-minded west and south-west 
 — was enthusiastically Presbyterian, and rejoiced to see the 
 State renounce the ecclesiastical associate of regal despotism, 
 and prepare to restore its former establishment and endow- 
 ment to a free Church in sympathy with a free people. 
 
^34 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 The populace in several districts, exasperated by the memories 
 of twenty-six years of outrage and injury, did not wait till the 
 orderly process of the law should expel the alien ' curate.' 
 Giving the rein to their own indignant sense of ill-usage, and in 
 the first turbulence of a recovered freedom, they took on them- 
 selves the work of driving the intruder from kirk and manse ; 
 in some cases with slight violence and insult, in none with 
 even an approach to the brutality with which the soldiery of 
 Dalziel and Claverhouse had harried the homes of the Cove- 
 nanters. This was that 'rabbling of the curates,' over which 
 their representatives and apologists may, to this day, be 
 heard to bleat and whimper. Never were enormous wrongs so 
 leniently retaliated. Never, in the day when power had passed 
 from the oppressors to the oppressed, was the oppression so 
 lightly revenged. 
 
 As soon as a Convention representing the true mind of the 
 mass of the nation was summoned. Prelacy was doomed. The 
 voice of righteousness and freedom was heard asserting the 
 people's ' Claim of Right' The Claim of Right formed the basis 
 of the Revolution Settlement ; and one of its clauses was, ' That 
 Prelacy and the superiority of any ofiice in the Church above 
 presbyters is, and hath been, a great and insupportable griev- 
 ance and trouble to this nation, and contrary to the inclinations 
 of the generality of the people, ever since the Reformation, 
 they having been reformed from Popery by presbyters ; and 
 therefore ought to be abolished.' This frank acknowledgment 
 of the will and welfare of the Christian people as a higher law 
 of Church polity than any jus divinum, royal or ecclesiastical, 
 must have struck terror into the hearts of the bishops, who 
 owed their existence to the king's will, and entrenched their 
 office behind the Church's tradition. The terror must have 
 deepened into despair when they found that the Parliament, 
 into which the Convention was transformed, passed, among 
 its earliest measures, an Act abolishing Scottish Prelacy — 
 which was succeeded by another abolishing Charles II.'s 'Act 
 
The Revolution Settlemoii. 235 
 
 of Supremacy.' The first steps of the free representatives 
 of the people, acting in their constitutional capacity, were to 
 abohsh the office and order which had embodied ecclesiastical 
 tyranny, and to rescind the servile concession by which a former 
 Parliament had degraded itself to own the galling yoke of regal 
 despotism. 
 
 We must, however, trace the stages of this history in more 
 exact and chronological detail. 
 
 William was essentially an Erastian. Born and bred a 
 Presbyterian, under the wing of that National Dutch Church, 
 which is Presbyterian to this day, he had no covenanting 
 enthusiasm for that, or for any form of Church government. 
 He wished to gain the crown of Scotland, and to rule the 
 Scottish people according to their own law, in Church and 
 State. Had their ecclesiastical constitution been reconcilable 
 with that of England, he would have been well pleased, 
 knowing that this reconciliation would have been a strong 
 element in that international union, which he foresaw must 
 ultimately be effected, if Great Britain was to hold its proper 
 place in Europe. As this reconciliation appeared to be impos- 
 sible, he prefen-ed that the nation should settle for itself what 
 form of Church government should be established. Its choice 
 would relieve him of an irksome responsibility, and would 
 transfer to other shoulders than his own the load of that 
 Anglican odium, which must follow the subversion of Episco- 
 pacy and triumph of Presbytery. Those exiles who had been 
 around him in Holland were all Presbyterians ; and had, no 
 doubt, represented their party in Scotland as the only one to 
 be consulted , or recognised. In London, William met many 
 representatives of Episcopacy, whose version of affairs in 
 Scotland opened his eyes to the diversity of feeUng and opinion 
 beyond the Tweed. The Episcopal party there, after all, was 
 stronger than he had supposed. He was beset by the perti- 
 nacious emissaries of both parties. Carstares introduced to him 
 an influential deputation of the Presbyterian ministers. Sir 
 
236 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 George Mackenzie and Bishop Rose, of Edinburgh, attended 
 him on behalf of the Episcopalians. At this juncture, it is 
 evident William was inclined to waver between supporting 
 Episcopacy and supporting Presbytery. As I have said else- 
 where, the ecclesiastical settlement of Scotland perplexed 
 him. He saw that Presbytery had lost ground ; and he saw 
 also that Episcopacy was Jacobite and intolerant. He did not 
 wish to put it down ; but if it would not abjure Jacobitism and 
 intolerance, it must be put down. He had the promise of 
 hearty Presbyterian support. Rose might have given him a 
 promise equally gratifying, on behalf of the Episcopalians. 
 Those whom he represented were not the men to quarrel with 
 his policy, if its result should be to keep them in safe possession 
 of their sees. William, through Compton, Bishop of London, 
 intimated to Rose that if the Scotch bishops and clergy would 
 give him their support, he would give them his, and ' throw off 
 the Presbyterians.' Rose would not take the hint. At length 
 he was admitted to an interview. ' Are you going for Scot- 
 land ? ' asked William. * Yes, sir,' answered Rose, ' if you have 
 any commands for me.' ' I hope,' replied the Prince, ' you 
 will be kind to me, and follow the example of England.' The 
 bishop's answer was : ' Sir, I will serve you as far as law, reason, 
 or conscience shall allow me.' William turned on his heel 
 without a word ; and the fate of the Scotch Episcopal establish- 
 ment was virtually sealed. 
 
 The Convention of the Estates of the realm, summoned 
 by William, met in March 1689. It consisted of one 
 hundred and fifty members, of whom nine were bishops. 
 When the resolutions declaring the throne vacant, and inviting 
 William and Mary to ascend it, were proposed, only nine 
 members voted against them. Of the nine, seven were 
 bishops. When these resolutions had been carried, and the 
 Claim of Right adjusted, three delegates of the Convention 
 — the Earl of Argyll, Sir John Dalrymple, and Sir James 
 Montgomery, were sent to London, empowered to offer the 
 
The Revolution Settlement. 237 
 
 crown to William and Mary, and to tender to them the 
 coronation oath. Argyll read the words of the oath, which 
 they, with uplifted right hand, repeated after him, clause by 
 clause. At the last clause, William paused, for it bound him 
 to root out all heretics and enemies of the true worship of God. 
 ' I will not,' said he, ' lay myself under any obligation to be 
 a persecutor.' On the commissioners' replying that no such 
 obligation was involved, ' In that sense, then, I swear,' said 
 William ; and the ceremony was concluded. 
 
 The incident was significant. It announced that the era 
 of the Covenant was past ; that the sword of the civil power 
 was not again to be drawn at the bidding of the Church, or 
 employed in ecclesiastical feud. This was gall and wormwood 
 to the Cameronian remnant, who looked with indignation on 
 the progress of a revolution which was to achieve results so far 
 below the height of their Utopian principles, and which they 
 felt they could neither control nor arrest. ' They held excited 
 meetings and used violent language ; but the dragoons no 
 longer dispersed their conventicles, and their stern military 
 spirit was judiciously allowed to expend itself in legitimate 
 warfare. The " Cameronian " regiment, eight hundred strong, 
 was drafted from their ranks, and under the gallant Cleland 
 played a noble part in retrieving the disaster of Killiecrankie. 
 The main body of the grim religionists, thus reduced in aggres- 
 sive strength, and no longer stimulated by persecution, watched 
 in sullen acquiescence the progress of events. They had done 
 their work. Their injuries, their martyrdoms, their passionate 
 protests, their inextinguishable vitality, their armed resistance to 
 a " tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws," had been powerful agents 
 in producing the Revolution. But in the political settlement 
 which followed it, the remnant of the Covenanters and the 
 Protesters had no part ; nor indeed were they fit to have any.' 
 The General Assembly, at its first meeting, received their 
 three remaining ministers into the Church. The fighting strength 
 of the Societies themselves was dispersed, or absorbed into the 
 
238 iSV Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 army. The ideal of a Covenanted Reformation faded away. 
 The Dutch king was hopelessly unlike the hero of a new 
 crusade against Popery, Prelacy, and profaneness. I question 
 if a sharper iron of angered and embittered disappointment 
 entered into the heart of any Prelatist or Royalist, in these 
 days of revolution, than that which pierced the proud, though 
 fanatical, spirit of the Cameronians. To them, as they saw 
 the Covenant quietly ignored by Laodicean politicians, while 
 lukewarm Churchmen calmly looked on, it was small comfort 
 to know that their old foe. Prelacy, fell in the same convulsion 
 which ingulfed the ark of their testimony. 
 
 The Convention denounced Prelacy : the Parliament abolished 
 it ; but it did nothing more. Episcopacy was put down ; but 
 Presbytery was not set up. Nothing was done to evict the 
 Episcopal incumbents, unless they shewed disloyalty by refusing 
 to pray for the new king and queen, for which refusal one 
 hundred and seventy-nine of them were expelled by the Privy 
 Council. No steps were taken to call a General Assembly. A 
 General Assembly indeed, such as the clergy in the North 
 clamoured for, would have been too wholly Episcopal to be 
 safely summoned. It was not till June 1690, that the Act was 
 passed ratifying the Confession of Faith ; settling Presbyterian 
 Church government ; and vesting that government in those 
 ministers who had been ousted since ist January 166 1, 
 and such other ministers and elders as they might receive 
 into co-operation with themselves. ' This famous Act was 
 not passed without some difficulty and opposition. When 
 the House was about to consider the article which ratified 
 the Confession of Faith, the Duke of Hamilton moved that 
 the Confession itself "be read all over with a distinct and 
 audible voice."' The Laird of Craignish preposterously pro- 
 posed that this should be done on the Lord's Day, if done 
 at all. The Duke's motion was adopted, and the long 
 Confession was read. When the reading was finished, 
 it was proposed that the Catechism and the Directory for 
 
The Revolutioji Settle jnent. 239 
 
 Public Worship should come next. But this was too much 
 for the wearied senators ; the reading of the Confession was 
 voted to be enough, and the Catechism and Directory were 
 passed over, and so escaped embodiment in the Act. At 
 various points the Duke of Hamilton offered an opposition 
 to the Bill, in the interests of a more indulgent treatment of 
 the Episcopal ministers, which did not fail to rouse the 
 suspicion of being dictated by resentment at Melville's prefer- 
 ment to the commissionership, quite as much as by real charity 
 and liberality. At last, before the House divided on the article 
 which, with undeniable injustice, proposed to confirm the 
 ejections by the "rabble," the Duke's temper gave way. 
 "The vote should stand," he cried, " approve or not approve 
 the deed of the rabble ; " and when the article had passed, " he 
 was sorry," he said, " that he should ever have sat in a Scottish 
 Parliament where such naked iniquity was established into a 
 law;" and, much in wrath, he marched out of the House, 
 followed by several other members. As soon as he was gone, 
 it was proposed to pass the whole Act i7i cumulo. A voice 
 was heard : " Fie ! make haste ! despatch, lest he return again, 
 and create more trouble." It came from a Presbyterian 
 minister, who had made his way into the house, and in the 
 excitement of the moment called out to the members near 
 him. The hint was taken. The whole Act was approven, 
 and laid on the table to await the royal assent. It erred, as 
 the legislation of the Parliament of the Restoration had erred, 
 in an assertion and in exercise of powers which, even though 
 tempered by William's impartial tolerance, were too harsh and 
 absolute. The extreme measures of the Restoration were sure 
 to beget a reaction of like extremes when the oppressed gained 
 their opportunity of becoming oppressors ; and the knowledge 
 of the near danger of Jacobite plots, which might overthrow the 
 still insecure fabric of the Revolution, disposed William's 
 Scottish supporters to be more jealous and rigid than their 
 master.' 
 
240 St Giles' Lectures. 
 
 The legislature, having settled the government and creed of 
 the Church, next adjusted its Patronage. The patronages were 
 taken from the old patrons, and conferred upon the heritors and 
 elders — in burghs, on the Town Council and elders — reserving 
 to the congregation the right of laying objections to a presentee 
 before the Presbytery, with whom should rest the decision of 
 their validity. Now that Patronage, in its old sense, has finally 
 been abolished in the Church, it is unnecessary to occupy time 
 in criticising this stage in its chequered history. We cannot 
 fail to see, however, that this settlement of it involved all the 
 elements of that conflict between the Presbytery, the people, 
 and the civil law, which came to its crisis in 1843. 
 
 The ground was now cleared for the meeting of a General 
 Assembly. The clearance had been effected, in the most 
 Erastian way, by the authority of the State alone. As in 
 earlier crises of her history, secular policy had ruled the destiny 
 of the Church, without her own assistance or consent. It is 
 one of the ugliest features of the epoch, and worst signs of the 
 generally low standard of the national religion, that it was 
 obviously thought unsafe to trust the settlement of Church 
 affairs to Churchmen. Such was the suspicion of their principles 
 — of their patriotism — of their integrity; such the dread of 
 their rancorous jealousies — of their lust of power — that the 
 clergy of neither persuasion found the politicians ready to 
 hand over to them the settlement of their own affairs, until 
 there was comparatively little left to settle. The politicians 
 themselves — we may remark in passing — were, as a ruJe, 
 singularly corrupt and untrustworthy. The very bench of 
 justice was defiled with bribery, favouritism, and servility. 
 The religious contentions of the Church, or some other equally 
 noxious cause, had been fatal to a high tone of public or private 
 morality. 
 
 The General Assembly met on i6th October 1690 — for the 
 first time since Cromwell's dragoons had interrupted its debates 
 thirty-seven years before — and was once more the Supreme 
 
The Revolution Settie}ne?it. 241 
 
 Court of an Established Church. It met in no very good 
 humour. It had been made to wait the pleasure of the king. 
 Though the Presbytery, which it represented, had been 
 established as agreeable to the Word of God, the Prelacy, 
 which it supplanted, had been deposed on no higher principle 
 than because it was contrary to the inclinations of the people. 
 The older members, who had been outed or exiled or ruined 
 under Prelacy, and who still retained some of the 'protesting' 
 zeal of earlier times, felt it chilled by the king's message recom- 
 mending, above all things, * Moderation.' ' Moderation,' said 
 the royal letter, delivered by the Commissioners to the Assembly, 
 ' is what religion enjoins, neighbouring churches expect from 
 you, and we recommend to you.' This word, much needed as 
 it was, and not yet of evil omen, was no doubt chosen by 
 the king's confidential adviser and friend, the cautious, wise, 
 and liberal Carstares. 
 
 The temper of this great Churchman's nature had been 
 tested by a long course of political vicissitude and personal 
 trial, of adversity, imprisonment, and exile. He had stood the 
 cruel torture of the thumbscrews with patient courage, and had 
 baffled the inquiries of his torturers with rare discretion. His 
 sterling honesty, his diplomatic skill, his varied experience, and 
 large sagacity, had long secured to him the thorough esteem 
 and confidence of William. His influence was predominant 
 in the settlement of the Scotch ecclesiastical affairs. He had 
 been by William's side in Holland during all the delicate 
 negotiations which preceded the invasion of England. He had 
 crossed with him in the same ship from Helvoetsluys to Tor- 
 bay. He had conducted, at the head of the army, the religious 
 service which consecrated its first day's occupation of English 
 soil. His counsel had guided the king through the critical 
 time when the balance of policy wavered between Episcopacy 
 ai%d Presbytery; and he had revised, along with William, the 
 drafts of the Act for the re-establishment of the Church. And 
 now he came to Edinburgh, armed with the king's instructions, 
 
 p 
 
242 St ales' Lectures. 
 
 \vhich were but the embodiment of his own ideas, to keep a 
 watchful eye upon the doings of the resuscitated ecclesiastical 
 court. 
 
 Upon the whole, the Assembly acted calmly and fairly on 
 the advice of the king. It was inevitable that among men, the 
 older of whom had borne the brunt of the persecution, the 
 younger of whom had been either trained in Holland in 
 enforced exile, or had exercised a fugitive ministry in defiance 
 of the law, there should be some bitterness of feeling and 
 warmth of prejudice. But these were held in check, partly by 
 the influence of Carstares, partly by a common-sense, which 
 convinced its possessors of the practical folly of indulging 
 personal fanaticisms, or straining after unattainable ideals. The 
 Covenant was dropped by the Assembly, as it had been dropped 
 by Parliament. There was no anathematising of Prelacy as 
 Satanic, or glorifying of Presbytery as divine. The ministers 
 of the Covenanting remnant were, as I have already said, 
 received into communion, on the one hand ; and, on the other, 
 full liberty to stay in their parishes was extended to all such 
 Episcopal curates as should subscribe the Confession, and 
 promise allegiance to the Presbyterian government. High-flying 
 Churchmen would have liked much more rigid exclusions — 
 much more dogmatic assertions of divine right — much sharper 
 discipline. But ' men must take what they can have in a 
 cleanly way, when they cannot have all they would,' wrote Lord 
 Melville, the Secretary of State, to Lord Crawford, president 
 of the Parliament, a stanch Presbyterian, with a keen eye and 
 a tight grip for the rents of abolished bishoprics. 
 
 A moderate Presbyterianism, tolerant of rival theories and 
 systems, a Church established on liberal and comprehensive 
 principles, and not on extreme dogmas and rigorous exclusiveness, 
 was all that was practicable ; and what was practicable was what 
 was most desirable. The devout theocratic imaginations of 
 John Knox, the haughty Hildebrandism of Andrew Melville, 
 the Judaic intensity of the leaders of the Covenant, had all 
 
The Revolution Settlement. 243 
 
 passed away. It was a tamer and less heroic time than theirs 
 — a time, not for the vehement assertion of absolute claims, 
 or the desperate maintenance of imperilled causes, but for the 
 quiet and patient reconstruction of a system of religion and 
 framework of society, disordered and ruptured by long years 
 of insolent oppression and exasperated resistance, of conflicting 
 jealousies and misunderstandings, during which hearts had 
 grown bitter and consciences perverse. 
 
 To prosecute this work of reconstruction, the Assembly, ere 
 it rose, appointed two Commissions, the one for the regions 
 lying to the south, and the other for those lying to the north, of 
 the Tay. These Commissions, in virtue of the powers con- 
 ferred on them by the Assembly, and by the Act of Parliament 
 which had authorised the Assembly to correct the disorders of 
 the Church by a system of visitations, were to go through the 
 country, purging out all obnoxious ministers. Although an Act 
 of the Revolution Parliament had taken what most people felt 
 to be its sharpest sting from ecclesiastical discipline, by for- 
 bidding, for the future, any civil penalty to follow a spiritual 
 sentence ; yet the powers of this executive of the Assembly 
 were very real, and extended to deposition from function and 
 benefice. To the south of the Tay the visitation proceeded 
 without disturbance or scandal. It was not so in the north. 
 The moderation of the Assembly was not reflected in the 
 Commission ; and the Presbyterian fervour, which had bridled 
 itself in Edinburgh, ran riot through the northern provinces, 
 driving out ministers, shutting up churches, stirring evil and 
 sectarian passions, under the cloak of enforcing ministerial 
 purity and efficiency. Where the incumbent was Episcopal, 
 it is to be feared charges of negligence, or immorality, or 
 heterodoxy, were only too readily framed and sustained. 
 
 What with the number expelled by the Privy Council for 
 refusing to acknowledge William and Mary, and those extruded 
 on various pleas by the Commissions, the Church in the 
 north was stripped of a host of her clergy, whose places no 
 
244 'S^ Gibes' Lectures. 
 
 new race of candidates had yet arisen to supply. In some 
 of the northern parishes, when substitutes for the deprived 
 incumbents were found, the people, resenting the loss of the 
 ordinances of religion through the expulsion of their old pastors, 
 resisted, and sometimes successfully, for months, and even 
 years, the induction of the new. At Inverness, for example, 
 which, though the capital of the Highlands, was then but 
 a wretched village of some five hundred thatched houses, 
 the people defied for no less than ten years the attempts of 
 the Presbytery to settle a minister among them. At Insch, 
 upon the parish falling vacant, the parishioners called an Episco- 
 palian curate, who did not even take the oaths to government, 
 but Avho remained in possession of the living for many years. 
 And these were not solitary cases. 
 
 Those Episcopal curates who had accepted the terms of 
 the government and remained in their parishes, were not 
 allowed to act as members of the Church courts. The 
 Presbyteries, accordingly, in the north, where Episcopacy was 
 strong, were mere skeletons. The whole Synod of Aberdeen, 
 comprising eight Presbyteries, had to concentrate itself into 
 one ; and even after the lapse of seven years, could only muster 
 sixteen clerical members. The desire to increase the strength 
 of the Presbyteries, no doubt, was one of the motives which 
 spurred the zeal of the Commission to substitute Presbyterian 
 for Episcopal parsons. But the bad blood engendered by the 
 process began to inflame the whole body of the Church and 
 State. 
 
 William was inclined to suspect the Commissioners of harsh- 
 ness and injustice, and to blame the general temper and policy 
 of the Presbyterians. The relations between the Crown and 
 the Church became strained. The annual meeting of the 
 Assembly was postponed by the royal command. The Church 
 grumbled at this interference with its right of convening at its 
 own pleasure. When at last the king summoned a meeting 
 for 15th January 1692, the members assembled in a some- 
 
The Revolution Settlement. 245 
 
 what irritated and irreconcilable mood, which was not soothed 
 by the receipt of a royal letter urging them to admit the 
 Conformist Episcopal ministers into the Church courts, on 
 subscribing a simple formula, of which the king sent them 
 the draft. The Assembly consigned the formula to the con- 
 sideration of a committee — a method of indirect strangulation 
 still dear to the heart of that venerable court — and having by 
 the 13th of February done nothing else, was abruptly dissolved 
 by the Commissioner, who declined even to name a day for 
 its next meeting. This was a direct repudiation, by the Crown, 
 of the Church's claim of a right to hold its annual Assembly; 
 and also rendered impossible that harmonious coincidence by 
 which the Commissioner and the Moderator, each naming the 
 same day, evaded any conflict of jurisdiction or confusion of 
 dates. The Moderator, in spite of the Commissioner's refusal, 
 appointed the next Assembly to be held in August 1693. This 
 was a mere assertion of the Church's rights. AVhen the day 
 came, no attempt was made to hold an Assembly. Before the 
 critical date, Parliament had intervened with an Act 'for settling 
 the quiet and peace of the Church,' in which provision was 
 made for the summoning of an Assembly by the sovereign. 
 While, by this clause, the Act averted the impending danger of 
 a direct collision between the royal and ecclesiastical authority ; 
 by another, it provided for the admission to a share in the 
 government of the Church of those Episcopal incumbents who 
 should subscribe the engagements set forth in the Act. One of 
 these was the ' Oath of Assurance ' — a new declaration which 
 had been devised to circumvent those who made a distinction 
 between a king de facto and a king de Jure, and who were ready 
 to own William in the one sense, but not in the other. The 
 oath of assurance expressed allegiance to him as king both 
 de facto and de jure. No one was to sit in the Assembly unless 
 he had taken this oath. 
 
 This enactment, so far from helping to settle the quiet 
 and peace of the Church, produced nothing but ill-will and 
 
246 S^ ales' Lccinres. 
 
 clamour. It exasperated Presbyterian and Episcopalian alike. 
 What right had ' Csesar ' to make a civil oath the condition of 
 entrance to an ecclesiastical court ? Was it to be borne that a 
 king, by popular election, should wring from the exigencies of 
 an ill-used priesthood a renunciation of the sacred doctrine 
 of hereditary right ? The remonstrances of the clergy, however, 
 had no effect. The Assembly was summoned for the 29th 
 March 1694; and the Commissioner was instructed to exact 
 the oath, and if it was refused, to dissolve the Assembly. The 
 crisis was perilous. The Crown was inexorable ; the Church's 
 patience was exhausted ; the perfervid Scotch blood was stirred. 
 But for some averting providence, Church and State must come 
 into fatal collision, and the Revolution Settlement perish in the 
 crash. The averting providence took the shape of the Church's 
 best and wisest friend, William Carstares. Among the events 
 of a somewhat monotonous and unpicturesque period, the 
 episode of his interposition is sufficiently striking to excuse its 
 being once more related, in the words of his first biographer, 
 M'Cormick. The Commissioner, Lord Carmichael, he tells 
 us, had been assured by the clergy that they could not and 
 would not give in. He ' saw that all his attempts to bring them 
 to better temper would be vain and fruitless. At the same time, 
 he was sensible that the dissolution of the Assembly would not 
 only prove fatal to the Church of Scotland, but also to his 
 Majesty's interest in that kingdom. From a sincere regard 
 to both, therefore, he undertook to lay the matter, as it stood, 
 fairly before the king ; and, for that purpose, sent off a flying 
 packet, which he expected to return from London, with the 
 king's final determination, the night before the Assembly was 
 appointed to meet. At the same time, the clergy sent up 
 a memorial to Carstares, urging him to use his good ofiices, in 
 this critical conjuncture, for the preservation of that Church 
 which he had so active a hand in establishing. 
 
 ' The flying packet arrived at Kensington in the forenoon of 
 that day upon which Carstares returned [he having been absent 
 
The Rei'ohiiioit Settlement. 247 
 
 from Court]. But before his arrival, his Majesty, by the advice 
 of Lord Stair and Lord Tarbat, who represented this obstinacy 
 of the clergy as an act of rebelHon against his government, had 
 renewed his instructions to the Commissioner, and sent them 
 off by the same packet, 
 
 ' When Carstares came to Kensington and received his letters, 
 he immediately inquired what was the nature of the despatches 
 his Majesty had sent off for Scotland ; and, upon learning their 
 contents, he went directly, and, in his Majesty's name, required 
 the messenger, who was just setting off, to dehver them up to 
 him. It was now late at night; and, as he knew no time was to 
 be lost, he ran to his Majesty's apartment ; and, being informed 
 by the lord-in-waiting that he was gone to bed, he told him it 
 was a matter of the last importance which had brought him at 
 that unseasonable hour, and that he must see the king. 
 
 ' Upon entering the chamber, he found his Majesty fast 
 asleep, upon which, turning aside the curtain, and falling down 
 upon his knees, he gently awaked him. The king, astonished 
 to see him at so late an hour, and in this posture by his bed- 
 side, asked him what was the matter ? He answered he had 
 come to ask his life. "And is it possible," said the king, " that 
 you have been guilty of a crime that deserves death?" He 
 acknowledged he had, and then produced the despatches he 
 had brought back from the messenger. " And have you," says 
 the king, with a severe frown — " have you indeed presumed to 
 countermand my orders ? " Carstares begged leave only to 
 be heard a few words, and he was ready to submit to any 
 punishment his Majesty should think proper to inflict.' He 
 then entered into an exposition of the situation of the Church 
 in Scotland, and of the arguments against the oath, which 
 M'Cormick gives at length ; and at the close of which, ' the 
 king, having heard him with great attention, gave him the de- 
 spatches to read, and desired him to throw them in the fire ; 
 after which, he bade him draw up the instructions to the 
 Commissioner in what terms he pleased, and he would sign 
 
248 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 them. Carstares immediately wrote to the Commissioner, 
 signifying that it was his Majesty's pleasure to dispense with 
 putting the oaths to the ministers ; and, when the king had 
 signed it, he immediately despatched the messenger, who, by 
 being detained so many hours longer than he intended, did 
 not arrive in Edinburgh till the morning of the day fixed 
 for the sitting of the Assembly. 
 
 ' By this time, both the Commissioner and the clergy were 
 in the utmost perplexity. He was obliged to dissolve the 
 Assembly ; they were determined to assert their own authority 
 independent of the civil magistrate. Both of them were appre- 
 hensive of the consequences, and looked upon the event of this 
 day's contest as decisive with respect to the Church of Scot- 
 land ; when, to their inexpressible joy, they were relieved by 
 the return of the packet, countermanding the dissolution of the 
 Assembly. Next to the establishment of Presbytery in Scot- 
 land, no act of King William's administration endeared him so 
 much to the Presbyterians as this.' 
 
 This incident, as I have remarked elsewhere, marked a crisis 
 in the history of the Church. Henceforth the Presbyterians 
 believed in William's honesty and good-will, as they had not 
 believed before. They were now convinced of his firm inten- 
 tion to maintain Presbytery, and of their own secure position. 
 Conscious of a confirmed power, they were able to use it with 
 greater generosity. The Assembly proceeded to receive, and 
 empowered its Commission also to receive, the Episcopal 
 clergy who should apply for reception upon the reasonable terms 
 recently approved by Parliament. Those who thus conformed 
 were amicably admitted. Many of those who would not con- 
 form were allowed, and even entitled, under the protection of an 
 Act of the Parliament of 1695, to remain, and to officiate in 
 their parishes, though debarred from a place in the Presbyteries, 
 Synods, and Assemblies, in which the Presbyterian government 
 was vested. The waste and empty places were gradually reached, 
 and filled up. In the north, force was no longer employed to 
 
77?^ Revolution Settlement. 249 
 
 expel Episcopal, or to intrude Presbyterian, incumbents. The 
 complete organisation of one homogeneous establishment was 
 left to the healing and restoring influences of time. That no 
 harsh pressure was used to hasten the action of these, and that 
 the policy and practice of the Church were vastly more lenient 
 after the Revolution than after the Restoration, is sufficiently 
 attested by the fact that even as late as 17 10 there were one 
 hundred and thirteen Episcopal ministers, of whom nine had not 
 even taken the prescribed oaths to government, still ministers of 
 parishes ; and that the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not 
 celebrated in Aberdeen, according to the Presbyterian use, until 
 the year 1704. The Episcopal Church, as a Church, was now, 
 however, practically broken up. Those of its clergy who con- 
 formed were henceforth politically powerless, and were merged, 
 more or less completely, in the Establishment. Those who kept 
 aloof, and who maintained a furtive relation to the surviving 
 bishops of the deprived Episcopate, became, in the natural 
 development of their original tendency, a body of political 
 dissidents, whose bond of union was primarily Jacobitism, and 
 only in a far inferior degree. Episcopacy. The lonely exile at 
 St Germain's was the true source of the Scotch Episcopacy 
 of the eighteenth century. The Scotch Episcopacy of the 
 nineteenth has no longer any sympathy with, in few cases 
 has it any knowledge of, its own historical ancestry. It retains 
 no relic or recollection of its old Scotch simplicity of ritual, and 
 of its Calvinistic creed. It acknowledges no admiration of the 
 royal absolutism, to which it owed its temporary establishment. 
 It has adopted the English Articles, and has clothed itself 
 with all the forms of Anglicanism of which it could lay 
 hold. It owes its vitality now to causes which did not 
 exist, and were not even thought of in 1694; but it is still, 
 as it has always been, essentially an alien on Scottish soil; 
 and in any of the great movements of thought, whether theo- 
 logical or political, exercises but little influence. That mid- 
 night interview of Carstares and William decided that, for evil 
 
250 St Giles' Lectures. 
 
 or for good, Scotland in future was to be emphatically Presby- 
 terian. 
 
 Since that critical year of 1694, there has been no break in 
 the regular annual meetings of the General Assembly, under 
 the sanction of the sovereign, as represented by the Lord High 
 Commissioner. There has been no attempt to subvert the 
 arrangement by which — the Moderator and the Commissioner 
 each naming the same day for its next meeting — the independ- 
 ence of the Church and the prerogative of the Crown are 
 mutually recognised and adjusted. 
 
 The period between this year and that of the Union is not 
 marked by any special interest. The Assembly of 1694 began 
 a process {which was continued, with intervals, up to 17 11) 
 of exacting, with a growing stringency, from both ministers and 
 elders subscription to the Confession of Faith. An overture 
 approved by this Assembly contains the earliest draft of the 
 formula, which was subsequently required from ministers and 
 elders ; and which, originally devised with a view to scare 
 undesirable Episcopal applicants, or, at least, to entrap them 
 into professions of orthodoxy, has bequeathed an embarrass- 
 ment to the Church in days when no such safeguards are 
 required. Orihodox zeal took a more untoward form, when it 
 prompted the sacrifice on its cruel altar of a foolish lad of 
 eighteen, who had rendered himself amenable to a savage law 
 of Charles II., by spouting some juvenile irreverences about 
 certain doctrines of the Church. A great deal has been made 
 of his execution, as an index of the relentless and persecuting 
 temper of the Presbyterian clergy. Lord Macaulay, in particular, 
 has described their part in Aikenhead's unhappy fate, v/ith much 
 rhetorical exaggeration, and says, 'Wodrow has told us no blacker 
 story of Dundee.' The lad, it must be remembered, was con- 
 demned, not by the Church, but by the High Court of Justi- 
 ciary ; and recent investigation has proved that the voice of the 
 clergy was by no means raised so unmercifully and unanimously 
 against him, as the eloquent historian has represented. 
 
The Rei>ohition Settlement. 
 
 251 
 
 That the spirit of the dominant reb'gion, as embodied 
 in the clergy of the Revolutionary Epoch, was somewhat 
 harsh, intolerant, and narrow, it would be vain to deny. 
 Persecution does not favour the growth of 'sweetness and light.' 
 Breadth of Christian culture and charity is not developed under 
 penal laws. ' The ministers of the Revolution,' as Mr Hill 
 Burton justly says, ' were no more a fair specimen of the literary 
 fruit of the Presbyterian system, than the fugitives of a routed 
 force are a fair specimen of the discipline and morality of an 
 army.' Nor were they a fair specimen of that noble type of 
 character, of which the Church had since the Reformation pro- 
 duced many shining examples, in which unselfish patriotism 
 and varied learning illustrate personal piety and charity. It 
 says much for the statesmanlike ability and governing power of 
 Carstares, that out of the somewhat rough materials, that lay to 
 his hand, he was able to build up the fabric of the restored 
 Church so skilfully as he did, and to keep so steadily to the 
 rule of ' Moderation.' It says much for the substantial reason- 
 ableness and good principle of the clergy — despite their defects 
 in culture, in tolerance, in the ' philosophic mind ' — that amongst 
 a people which still believed in witchcraft there were no serious 
 outbreaks of religious bigotry ; that in a country seething with 
 Jacobite intrigues, and national discontents, and preyed upon 
 by a gigantic pauperism, there was no explosion of political or 
 social disorder. The earlier fathers and leaders of the Church, 
 of whom you have heard, reckoned among their number many 
 men of marked genius, learning, and literary power. There is 
 no greater name than Buchanan's among the names of the 
 European scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
 Melville, Baillie, Rutherford, Calderwood, Gillespie, were all 
 learned divines and accomplished men of letters; and there 
 were many of the same class and character among the Church- 
 men of the first half of the seventeenth century. But we 
 find no such names in the roll of the Revolution clergy. 
 The greatest man among them, Carstares, was a good scholar, 
 
252 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 and had enjoyed the advantage of the best training that 
 Holland — that generous nurse and shelter of Presbyterianism 
 • — could afford him; but his destiny and the bent of his 
 mind led him to the region of diplomacy and politics — 
 ecclesiastical and secular — and not of literature. The most 
 prolific writer of the period, Wodrow, cannot take high rank 
 among scholars and authors. The theological and literary 
 dearth is not relieved by the superabundance of contro- 
 versial pamphleteering — of all forms of literary activity the 
 most barren and unedifying. 
 
 Yet it is to the Church at this era of intellectual sterility — 
 as far as its literature is concerned — that we owe the measures 
 which have done more than any other to develop the intel- 
 lectual life of our country. Public education had been neg- 
 lected during the internecine strifes of Prelacy and Presbytery. 
 Now, however, the Assembly and the Parliament found time 
 and opportunity to carry out, at last, one long-postponed 
 portion of Knox's great scheme of Education. Since the 
 Restoration, no effort had been made to establish the system 
 of parochial schools : but the Church of the Revolution 
 was not content until Parliament had passed an Act com- 
 pelling the heritors of every parish to erect and endow a parish 
 school ; which was followed by an Act of Assembly enjoining 
 Presbyteries to see this law obeyed. It was duly carried out, 
 and the result was soon apparent. ' It made,' says Mr Lecky, 
 in his England in the Eighteenth Century, ' the average level of 
 Scotch intelligence superior to that of any other part of the 
 Empire.' Now that the system, which brought such good for 
 our forefathers, has been superseded by another, it is well to 
 remember that they owed it to the Church of the Revolution. 
 
 The industrial and commercial life of Scotland, which had 
 long been paralysed by the distractions of the country, began to 
 revive after the re-establishment of the National Church, but 
 had scarcely grown into any strength or stature, when it was 
 stupefied by the crushing disaster of Darien. The only hope of 
 
The Revolution Sdilemcnt 253 
 
 its renewal lay in a union with England. Social and political 
 ambition, commercial enterprise, and the desire to secure the 
 Protestant succession to the throne, all pointed in the same 
 direction. 
 
 The Church had no liking for closer connection with 
 Prelatic England ; but wise Churchmen knew that Estab- 
 lished Presbytery had nothing to lose by being made a part 
 of the constitution of the United Kingdom, and put under 
 the protecting wing of the stable legislature of Great Britain. 
 The Church's interests, in prospect of the Union, had often 
 engaged the Scottish Parliament ; and Belhaven and his friends 
 had been zealous to maintain that the treaty offered no security 
 to the Church adequate to the danger which she would incur. 
 The Jacobites eagerly tried to fan the flame of discontent and 
 apprehension ; but the great majority of the clergy were wise, 
 and were wisely counselled by Carstares, who after William's 
 death had come to Scotland to be the Principal of the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh, and minister of this ancient church. They 
 refused to be led away by the zeal of injudicious allies 
 or the false sympathy of covert foes. The Commission 
 of the General Assembly, which, in virtue of its ordinary 
 powers, continued to act when the Assembly was not in 
 Session, represented the Church during the progress of the 
 treaty with calmness and dignity ; and in its addresses to 
 Parliament temperately stated those points in the measure 
 which were considered defective. The Commission com- 
 plained of the English Sacramental Test as the condition 
 of holding civil and military ofhce, and urged that no oath or 
 test of any kind, inconsistent with Presbyterian principles, 
 should be required from Scottish Churchmen. They recom- 
 mended that an obligation to uphold the Church of Scotland 
 should be embodied in the Coronation Oath. They repre- 
 sented the necessity of a ' Commission for the Plantation of 
 Kirks and Valuation of Teinds ; ' and they concluded their 
 fullest and most formal representation with an intimation 
 
2 54 »S'/ Giles^ Lectures, 
 
 that knowing, as they did, that twenty-six bishops sat in the 
 House of Lords, which, on the conclusion of the treaty would 
 have jurisdiction in Scottish affairs, they desired to state, 
 with all respect, but all firmness, that it was contrary to the 
 Church's ' principles and covenants ' that ' any Churchman 
 should bear civil ofiices and have power in the Common- 
 wealth.' 
 
 These representations had due effect. The bench of bishops 
 of course could not be removed. The operation of the Test 
 Act in England could not be meddled Avith, though its scandal 
 and injustice were undeniable ; but as a kind of equivalent for 
 this grievance, and to guard the Scotch universities and schools 
 against the dreaded infection of Prelacy, it was enacted that 
 eveiy professor and teacher should, ere his admission, subscribe 
 the Confession of Faith as the confession of his faith, and 
 bind himself, in the Presbytery's presence, to conform to the 
 discipline and worship of the Established Church. It was 
 provided that the unalterable establishment and maintenance 
 of the Presbyterian Church should be stipulated by an Act 
 prior to any other Act that should ratify the treaty, and should 
 then be embodied in the Act of ratification ; and that the first 
 oath the British sovereign should take, on his accession, and 
 before his coronation, should be an oath to maintain ' the 
 government, worship, discipline, rights, and privileges of the 
 Church of Scotland.' The minor points, as to kirks and teinds, 
 were satisfactorily disposed of, and the Church saw her firmness 
 and moderation crowned with an adequate success. 
 
 A General Assembly had been held in the spring of 1707, 
 ere yet the Act of Union had come into operation. There is 
 no reference to the Union in its printed records ; and we may 
 conclude that its leaders, finding that their brethren would not 
 bless the treaty, thought it best to pass it by in silence. Their 
 patriotic calmness and self-control were highly appreciated by 
 the government ; which was well aware that had the clergy 
 thrown their influence into the same scale with the popular 
 
The Revolution Settlement. 255 
 
 passion and hatred of the Union, it never could have been 
 accomphshed. 
 
 By the time the Assembly of 1708 met, the ancient 
 Parliament, which the ecclesiastical Convention had so often 
 controlled, so often withstood, had passed away for ever. 
 With the demise of the Scottish Legislature much of the 
 strength and glory of the Supreme Court of the Church 
 departed. The Assembly could never again expect to influence 
 the British, as it had influenced the Scottish, Parliament. 
 The leaders of Scotch political life, attracted to St Stephen's, 
 and exposed there to all the influences of English society and 
 of a powerful and predominant Episcopacy, were no longer 
 likely to take their seats as elders in the Scotch Church court, 
 and to lend their weight to its deliberations. 
 
 It was of importance that the first Assembly that met in these 
 altered circumstances should choose as its president one whose 
 Presbyterianism and Churchmanship had stood keen tests, and 
 who yet enjoyed the confidence of the government, and had 
 been a promoter of the Union, and who, by the worth of his 
 character and dignity of his position, would do honour to the 
 Moderator's Chair. The choice naturally fell upon Carstares. 
 
 The queen's letter to the Assembly made no special reference 
 to the Union, although referring, in commendation, to the ' zeal 
 and affection ' which the Church had shewn, during the recent 
 attempt at a French invasion in the Jacobite interest. Neither 
 in the Acts of Assembly, nor in its address to the queen, is 
 the great change in the constitution of the nation named. 
 Carstares' opening speech is occupied with the threatened 
 invasion, rather than with the abolished Legislature and the 
 new condition of things. ' The Presbyterians of Scotland,' he 
 said, 'have too great a concern for the Protestant Churches, 
 and too great a detestation of Popery and tyranny, and see and 
 hear of too many dismal instances of French government, not 
 to have an abhorrence both of the designs of Versailles and the 
 pretences of St Germain's.' 
 
256 S^ Gilei Lectures, 
 
 This avoidance of a subject which could not but be upper- 
 most in all men's minds indicates no indifference to it, nor any 
 unanimity regarding it ; it rather reveals a state of feeling and 
 opinion in which it was tacitly admitted that the subject could 
 not be approached without danger. National pride had been 
 too recently wounded, ecclesiastical jealousy too freshly 
 irritated, the practical effects of the Union, in Church and 
 State, in society and in trade, too little tested, to allow of any 
 body of Scottish Presbyterians giving it an unprejudiced dis- 
 cussion. Carstares' wisdom and moderation were rewarded 
 by, as they were reflected in, the dignified reticence of the first 
 post-Union Assembly. The predominating control of that 
 great Moderate party, which he had largely helped to con- 
 solidate, and which he now led — a control that was to last for 
 more than a century — was already established. 
 
 I have reached my limit. If, throughout this lecture, and 
 now at its close, I should be thought to have trenched too 
 much on the domain of civil history, it must be remembered 
 that the rights of the people were inseparably connected with 
 their Church's cause ; and that it was, in point of fact, the 
 sturdy Presbyterianism of Scotland, of which their Church was 
 the embodiment, that won the liberties of the Revolution, and 
 secured the blessings of the Union. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 THE CHURCH OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 
 
 1707 TO 1800 A.D.^ 
 
 By the Very Rev. John Tulloch, D.D., LL.D., Principal of St Mary's 
 College, St Andrews, and one of Her Majesty's Chaplains. 
 
 nPHE subject assigned me is a large one, requiring an extended 
 -*- canvas. In the short space allotted to me, I can only- 
 draw some of its salient features. It is, moreover, a difficult 
 and critical subject, stirring questions of which we have not- yet 
 seen the end, and bringing before us for the first time fully- 
 developed parties, whose rival influence has modified the whole 
 modern history of the Church of Scotland, and whose conflicts 
 and jealousies survive to the present time. I must therefore 
 not only work upon a reduced canvas, but with a very delicate 
 pencil. Whatever use these St Giles' Lectures may be, one of 
 their main intentions must be to soften, rather than to harden 
 ecclesiastical prejudices, and to make the controversies and 
 
 ^ I wish particularly to express my obligations in the preparation of this 
 lecture to Dr Cunningham's Church History of Scotland, vol. ii., and Morren's 
 Annals of the General Assembly from 1739 to 1766 — the more so that I have 
 not given detailed references to either. I need not particularise my obli- 
 gations otherwise. They appear partly in the course of the lecture, which 
 has been completed with difficulty during illness, and makes no claim to 
 research. 
 
258 S^ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 asperities of the past a warning for our better guidance, rather 
 than a stimulus to our unspent feuds. The Lecturer must of 
 course say what he thinks ; but he must say it with discrimina- 
 tion, and in charity towards all. 
 
 With the cessation of the Scottish Parliament in 1707, 
 Scotland ceased to have a separate political history. It re- 
 mained in many respects still a distinct kingdom, especially in 
 those social and religious characteristics which are deeper than 
 any Acts of Parliament, which formal legislation may express and 
 ratify, but cannot directly alter. The people themselves were 
 distinct from their kindred across the Border; hardened into 
 an independent nationality by long struggle with influences 
 which they refused to accept, and having their independence 
 rooted in the passionate, if narrow love, which is always lavished 
 on that which has cost us dear. The judicial and administra- 
 tive system of the country which centred in the Court of Session 
 and its cognate functionaries, was distinct. And of course the 
 Church was distinct, secured by definite statute in 1690, and 
 again and very solemnly in the Act of Union. The Commissioners 
 for the Union had been precluded from treating 'of or con- 
 cerning any alteration of the worship, discipline, and government 
 of the Church as by law established in Scotland.' Whatever 
 was to be altered, the Presbyterian Church was not to be 
 altered. And so, while the ancient Parliament of the realm 
 disappeared, the Scottish Church not only remained untouched, 
 but was continued, in the emphatic words of the Act of Union, 
 ' without any alteration to the people of this land in all succeed- 
 ing generations ; ' and the oath guaranteeing this settlement, as 
 is well known, is the first that is taken by a new monarch on 
 his or her accession to the throne. 
 
 Distinct as Scotland remained in national life at the begin- 
 ning of the eighteenth century, the Church, thus secured by 
 statute and the ' inclinations of the generality of the people, ever 
 since the Reformation,' naturally became the chief organ for the 
 expression of national feeling and activity. Such national diver- 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 259 
 
 sities as existed were reflected in it, and came to a head in the 
 management of its affairs in the General Assembly. The 
 difficulties described in the previous lecture as to the Episcopal 
 clergy who remained within the Church, were prolonged into 
 this period ; and others were added arising out of the Union 
 and the natural influx of English officials which followed it. 
 In the east and the north — in Forfarshire, Kincardineshire, 
 Aberdeenshire, and even the far Ross-shire, where Presbyterian- 
 ism of an extreme type is now so conspicuously found, 
 Episcopacy possessed many entire parishes. In point of fact, 
 there were parts of the Highlands and Islands where Popery, 
 if not Paganism, still lingered; and to the acknowledgment 
 of this fact the Society for the Propagation of Christian 
 Knowledge owes its origin. It originated in the very year 
 of the Union, was fostered by the Church, and received royal 
 institution and sanction two years later. There are Highland 
 districts even now, as every one knows, where Romanism has 
 its contented and peaceful adherents. But in the beginning 
 of last century, and in the view of a National Presbyterianism 
 clothed with new statutory authority, such facts were naturally 
 .fitted to arouse anxiety. The terms of the Church's original 
 establishment called upon it to purge out all such erroneous 
 elements, as savouring of civil no less than of religious dis- 
 affection; and the royal letters addressed to the General 
 Assembly , emphasised the same duty of planting everywhere 
 vacant churches with sound Protestant ministers. This part of 
 its work, therefore, was expressly laid upon the Church ; and it 
 was no mere restlessness of zeal that impelled it to undertake 
 the task of Presbyterian propagandism, in the course of which 
 the visitors or agents of the General Assembly sometimes 
 met with what Wodrow calls 'very inhuman treatment from 
 those disaffected to the Establishment.' ^ 
 
 The Church was only doing its duty in planting, so far as it 
 
 ^ CorresJ)., vol. i., p. 216. 
 
26o 6"/ Giles Lectures. 
 
 was able, Presbyterian ministers in the face of local opposition ; 
 but it was undoubtedly wrong in resisting the rights of free 
 worship and toleration to Episcopal clergymen like Green- 
 shields, who desired merely to meet and hold divine service 
 according to the forms of the Church of England. The per- 
 secution of Greenshields, from first to last, was a miserable 
 business, reflecting credit neither on the General Assembly nor 
 on the Magistrates of Edinburgh ; and the Tory Parliament of 
 Queen Anne, if not to be justified in much that it did, was 
 fully justified in securing by statute that the Episcopal Com- 
 munion in Scotland should not be disturbed in the exercise 
 of their religious worship. The Toleration Act of 1712 was 
 a statute of freedom, obnoxious as it was to the great body 
 of Presbyterians. It confined the ecclesiastical power to its own 
 sphere; and, while it left the Church its anathemas against 
 schism and ' innovations in the worship of God,' protected all 
 who chose to put themselves voluntarily beyond its pale from 
 all forcible interference. It is melancholy to think that even 
 the Church of Carstares did what it could to oppose such a law, 
 and that it can be said with truth by the modern historian that 
 the Scottish Parliament would never have ventured to pass it. 
 
 But the legislature of Queen Anne, unhappily, did not stop 
 with the Act of Toleration. In the very same year it intro- 
 duced the Act for the Restoration of Patronage, which has 
 proved such a fertile and unhappy cause of division in Scot- 
 land. I need hardly say that I am not going to treat this 
 subject in any controversial spirit; but the facts regarding it 
 require to be clearly stated, if for no other purpose than because 
 it forms the centre round which all the later external history of 
 the Church of Scotland revolves. There are features of the 
 Church in the eighteenth century which would no doubt have 
 been the same although lay Patronage had not been restored ; 
 but the history of Scottish Presbyterianism would have been 
 entirely different, if the Tory politicians of Queen Anne had 
 only left undisturbed the settlement of the Patronage question 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 261 
 
 made in 1690 by the same Parliament of William and Mary as 
 re-established the Church. It is true that this settlement did 
 not go so far as some had desired. It did not recog- 
 nise the right 'of every several congregation to elect their 
 minister,' as formulated in the First Book of Discipli?ie, to 
 which — although never sanctioned by law — a certain class of 
 Presbyterians have always looked back as their special charter. 
 Nor did it fall back upon the Parliamentary enactment of 1649, 
 by which Patronage was first legally abolished, and the right 
 of collation was left in the hands of the Church, acting 
 'on the call and with the consent of the congregation, on 
 whom none was to be intruded against their will.' The 
 Act of 1690 gave the initiative or right of nomination to 
 the heritors and elders or kirk-session of each parish, who 
 were taken bound to pay to the respective patrons a small 
 sum of money, for which they were supposed to renounce 
 their rights for ever. It is needless to ask whether this was 
 a good settlement of the question in itself. It does not 
 seem to have worked smoothly; but then no system could 
 have worked smoothly at such a time when many parishes 
 were still alienated from the dominant Presbyterianism, and 
 disputes as to the succession of ministers were necessarily 
 engendered. The one thing that demands our attention 
 is, that the lay patron had disappeared under solemn statutory 
 enactment. That form of Patronage which the Church, or at 
 least those supposed most entitled to represent it, had always 
 felt as a ' heavy grievance,' had been constitutionally removed. 
 It had been unknown to Scottish Presbyterianism for upwards of 
 sixty years ; and it is hardly possible therefore to conceive any- 
 thing more unwise or unjust than its restitution. Carstares did 
 all he could to prevent it, but in vain. The well-known Act of 
 Queen Anne finally passed both Houses of Parliament by large 
 majorities, and received the royal assent on the 2 2d April 17 12. 
 It was not immediately that the sad effects of this policy 
 began to appear. The call survived untouched by the new 
 
262 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 legislation; and while the initiative was transferred to the lay 
 patrons, the custom of consulting the wishes of the congrega- 
 tion was still maintained in force. It is not till some con- 
 siderable time afterwards that we hear of special difficulties in 
 the settlement of ministers. In fact, the first form which these 
 difficulties took does not seem to have sprung from the people 
 themselves, but from the rivalry of two parties within the 
 Church, neither of whom in the beginning doubted that some- 
 thing more was required than the mere act of Patronage — some- 
 thing implying the assent of the parish or congregation — to 
 constitute the right of entry to a ministerial charge. Neither 
 party, in short, doubted the necessity of a call. The only 
 question between them was as to the persons in whom the right 
 of call was vested. Was it the congregation itself, or merely 
 the kirk-session and heritors, according to the Act of 1690? 
 It was not till 1732 that this question arose definitely in the 
 Church. The inference to be drawn from this is, that while 
 the restoration of Patronage in 1 7 1 2 was probably intended as 
 a movement in favour of the reactionary Jacobite policy of the 
 latter part of Queen Anne's reign, such an intention was 
 entirely frustrated by the accession of George I. and the 
 Rebellion following in 17 15. The Jacobite influences were 
 effectually crushed for tlie time by the severities which the 
 Rebellion called forth, and the renewed right of Patronage 
 evidently remained for some time a dead letter, or nearly so. 
 
 But gradually with the consolidation of the Hanoverian 
 dynasty, and the increasing attachment of many of the gentry 
 to the Presbyterian Church as representing the established 
 order of things, the Church itself, or at least a section of it, 
 became more reconciled to Patronage and to its exercise within 
 definite bounds. A new race of clergy began to appear — men 
 to whom the troublous times before the Revolution were a dim 
 retrospect, and who were animated, not so much by an enthu- 
 siasm for Presbytery, as by what they deemed a sober and 
 enlightened regard to the peace and good of the country both 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 263 
 
 in Church and State. This change may be said to date 
 definitely from about 1720. The words popular and moderate 
 party were not heard of as yet. It is at least twenty years later 
 till they come into vogue, and much later before they assume 
 the characteristics by which they are generally distinguished. But 
 the germs of the divisions were perceptible at this earlier time. 
 
 Much has been said, and as it appears to me, not very 
 intelligently, as to the growth of what is called Moderatism in 
 the Church of Scotland. The word has unhappily become 
 a by-word — a synonym of evil reproach — in the mouths of 
 those who dislike the cause and the principles which it is 
 understood to represent. I am not its apologist ; but I desire 
 this as well as all historical phenomena should be looked at 
 rationally, as a product of natural forces working in the 
 national mind of Scotland in the eighteenth century, and 
 not as a mere combination of evil men for evil purposes, 
 which is not only not a rational, but not an intelligible 
 view of any historical movement. Whatever elements may 
 have entered into the composition of the Moderatism of the 
 eighteenth century, it was so far plainly a direct expression of 
 the spirit of the age and the circumstances of the Church, 
 extending as far back as the close of the first quarter 
 of the century, and destined, as we shall see, to assume 
 very distinct phases with the course of the century. It was 
 impossible that the enthusiasms which had preceded and 
 accompanied the Revolution should last, or that the more 
 settled order of the time should not produce the natural fruits 
 in a more settled temper and a disposition to adapt the machi- 
 nery of the Church to its changed fortunes. But it is equally 
 certain that a change of this kind would be unacceptable to 
 many in the Church, in whom the old spirit survived — men 
 like Wodrow, Boston, the Erskines, and others, who loved the 
 old enthusiasms for their own sake, and could only see spiritual 
 declension in a less fervent state of the spiritual atmosphere. 
 Wodrow himself, in his lengthened and garrulous Correspondence 
 
264 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 and Analeda, is an unceasing witness to the alteration of 
 feeling and sentiment that was going on around him. The 
 new and the old are mingled in his pages in the most curious 
 manner. He is himself the child of the age that is passing 
 away. The dawn of the new age is unpleasant to himj yet 
 he cannot wholly give his faith to the legends of the one, ncr 
 shut his mind against the larger light of the other. The trial 
 of Simson, Professor of Divinity in Glasgow, and the * Marrow 
 Controversy,' from 17 18 to 1722 — are on the intellectual and 
 theological side notable illustrations of the same conflict 
 between the new and the old; the spirit of criticism and 
 negation which was beginning to assail the old watchwords 
 of the Faith, and the spirit of extreme Evangelicalism, which 
 was its natural reaction. The ' Marrow Divinity,' although a 
 direct continuation from the seventeenth century, was yet also 
 something of a novelty in Scotland, as Wodrow himself felt. 
 The voice was the voice of the Evangel, but its language was 
 too perilously near to Antinomianism for the good minister of 
 Eastwood — who loved not merely the old ways, but to stand in 
 them in the old manner. 
 
 It is evident from all that we have said that the Church was 
 in movement in the years that followed 1720, and that we are to 
 trace back to this time the formation of distinct parties within 
 her. Up to this time she had been so busy in settling her 
 borders, planting vacant churches, and watching against the 
 common enemies of Romanism and Episcopacy, that she had 
 had no time to develop internal divisions.^ Such divisions as 
 
 ^ This is the view of Sir Henry Moncrieff Wellwood, as shewn in the 
 following passage (Appendix, No. I., p. 421) in his Life of Dr Erskine: 
 ' An unbiassed reader who dispassionately examines the proceedings of the 
 General Assemblies from 1690 to 17 12, cannot but perceive the sincerity with 
 which the great body of the clergy then united to promote the religious 
 interests of the people and the general tranquiUity of the country. There 
 were occasional differences of opinion among them. But there do not 
 appear any settled combinations, or indeed any offensive symptoms, either 
 of party spirit or of political intrigue.' 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 265 
 
 existed had been inherited ; they had come to her with the 
 Revolution settlement which made her ; and no doubt the force 
 of these earlier divisions was perpetuated in the new. The 
 survival of Episcopal curates in the Church may have in this 
 way helped the nascent growth of Moderatism. But facts 
 do not point to any such influence working within the 
 pure leaven of Presbytery. By the year 1720, the Episcopal 
 incumbents within the Church must have been rapidly dying 
 out ; nor is there any reason to believe either that they were 
 likely to adapt themselves specially to the altered law of 
 Patronage, or to become the exponents of a new theology. I 
 cannot think, therefore, that Moderatism can have drawn almost 
 anything of its strength or life from such a source. The truth 
 seems to be simply, that with a new generation, Presbyterianism 
 began to take a new colour. This is true of the popular, no 
 less than of the moderate side of the Church. Even the fervid 
 Evangelicalism which lived on was no longer quite the same. 
 The tone was different, if not the principles. The spirit of the 
 eighteenth century was insensibly moulding all parties within 
 the Church, even those most opposed to it. 
 
 The difficulties which sprung up in the Church with the 
 advance of the eighteenth century were partly doctrinal and 
 partly administrative. We have already alluded to the case of 
 Professor Simson. So far as mere prominence is concerned, he 
 is quite a heresiarch in the history of the Scottish Church. He 
 was twice the subject of trial. As early as 17 14, his opinions 
 were brought under the notice of the Church courts ; and three 
 years later, after the Presbytery of Glasgow had dealt with him 
 at length, his teaching was formally censured by the General 
 Assembly to the effect that 'he had vented unnecessary 
 opinions and used expressions in a bad and unsound sense, 
 and attributed too much to the powers of natural reason and 
 corrupt human nature.' Ten years later, Simson was again 
 arraigned for heretical tendencies of a quite different character. 
 Formerly, his teaching was found inclined to Pelagianism ; 
 
266 S^ Gilei Lectures. 
 
 now, it was Arianism or Semi-Arianism on the borders of 
 which he seemed to hover. 
 
 It is difficult to express any definite opinion of Simson's case. 
 On the one hand, he himself fails to interest us — even if we 
 judge him in some degree a victim of persecution. He is 
 throughout a veiled and vacillating figure, seldom appearing 
 except in the background as an argumentative valetudinarian 
 who makes endless explanations without reaching any result 
 satisfactory to his accusers. Wodrow represents him as a 
 man of restless argumentative tendency, who delighted to stir 
 the theological atmosphere around him, without much real 
 depth or reflective thoughtfulness. But his letters, and especi- 
 ally the first letter of date March 2, 1726, give a higher idea 
 of his intelligence and learning, if they are also marked by a 
 strangely querulous spirit. On the other hand, Simson's accusers 
 seem captious and unfair in refusing to acknowledge the 
 apparent honesty of many of his explanations, and especially 
 in submitting the Glasgow students to a process of examination 
 as to any unguarded utterances he may have used in the course 
 of his teaching. The process did not end till 1729, when 
 the General Assembly, heartily tired of it, as their minute 
 implies, brought it to an issue by suspending the Professor 
 permanently from his functions of teaching and preaching. As 
 a whole, the case is highly significant of a certain restlessness of 
 thought in the Church, and at the same time of the very narrow 
 limits within which it was possible for this thought to express 
 itself without incurring censure. Younger minds were begin- 
 ning to move out of the old dogmatic restraints ; but the great 
 majority of the clergy had no idea of relaxing even the old 
 modes of expression, far less the old doctrines. 
 
 When Simson's sentence of suspension was finally confirmed 
 in May 1729, there was one minister of the old school who 
 expressed his dissatisfaction and intimated his dissent from 
 the judgment as too lenient. This was Thomas Boston, 
 minister of Ettrick, the apostle of the * Marrow Divinity,' 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 267 
 
 and the well-known author of the Fourfold State. As the 
 case of Simson marks the advance of a negative line of 
 thought in the Church, the case of the ' Marrow men,' as they 
 were called, represents the survival of the spirit of doctrinal 
 enthusiasm. It was characteristic above all of this spirit, that 
 the power of Divine grace should not only appear in the front 
 of the Gospel system, but should so overlay the whole sphere of 
 Christian life, as to seem to supersede all distinct activity of the 
 human will. The Auchterarder formula, which was connected 
 with the rise of the ' Marrow ' movement, brings this out clearly : 
 ' I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we 
 must forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ.' The zealous 
 Calvinists of the Auchterarder Presbytery required all candidates 
 for the ministry to sign this formula, a proceeding which was 
 properly reprobated by the General Assembly of 17 17. There 
 were a few zealous clergy, however, of the old school who 
 approved of the formula, or at least of the faith it was supposed 
 to indicate, and who of course dissented strongly from the 
 sentence of the Assembly. 
 
 In the course of his parochial visits while minister of the 
 parish of Simprin, Boston had come across a volume which 
 greatly interested him as a highly interesting embodiment of 
 his special views. The author of this volume was an Oxford 
 gentleman-commoner of Brazennose College — Edward Fisher — 
 who in the first triumphs of Puritan zeal had caught its 
 dogmatic spirit in a very ardent form, and transferred it to 
 his pages in a dialogue 'touching the Covenant of Works 
 and the Covenant of Grace ; and secondly, touching the 
 most plain, pithy, and spiritual exposition of the Ten Com- 
 mandments.' The dialogue is carried on by such speakers 
 as Evangelista, a minister of the Gospel ; Nomista, a Legalist, 
 Antinomista, an Antinomian, and Neophitus, a young Chris- 
 tian ; and the object is to explain the relations of the Law and 
 the Gospel. The book, which bears the general title, The 
 Marrow of Modern Divinity, is learned and, in a sense, lively, 
 
!68 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 if no longer very readable. It contains much that is both true 
 and sound in doctrine ; but the form of it, as may be easily 
 imagined, suggests paradox and overstatement. Many of its 
 propositions were capable of a dangerous interpretation — such 
 as that ' the believer was not under the law, and that he 
 does not commit sin.' Nothing could seem more wildly 
 Antinomian, and yet the intended meaning was probably no 
 more than that Christ is all in all to the believer, and 
 that God looks not upon the sinner himself but on Christ, 
 in whom he is delivered from all sin. Here, as everywhere in 
 theological controversy, if the terms could only be settled 
 beforehand, the controversy might almost cease. The 
 ' Marrow men ' certainly did not mean to teach, any more, 
 we suppose, than the Auchterarder Presbytery, that a believer 
 is freed from the obligations of the Christian life, however 
 incautiously they may have expressed themselves. It is not 
 to be wondered at, however, that the General Assembly in 
 1720 condemned the book, and forbade it to be circulated 
 or recommended. Of course the * Marrow men ' protested 
 against this decision. They held a meeting at Edinburgh, at 
 which both Ebenezer Erskine and his brother Ralph attended. 
 They made a representation of their views to the General 
 Assembly, and two years later that court so far modified 
 their sentence, but at the same time condemned the repre- 
 sentation and petition signed by the Erskines and others as 
 containing ' injurious and undutiful aspersions cast upon the 
 supreme judicatory of the Church. The General Assembly,' it 
 is added, ' had no design to recede from the received doctrine 
 of the Church ; ' but those who impugned its judgment had 
 laid themselves open to suspicion that they favoured the Anti- 
 nomian errors censured in the Act regarding the Marrow of 
 Modern Divinity. The ' Marrow men,' who had now increased 
 to a band of twelve, including the Erskines, were accordingly 
 rebuked and admonished at the bar of the Assembly. 
 
 Much followed this Act of Assembly which we have no time, 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Centivy. 269 
 
 however hurriedly, to notice. Of course the ' Marrow men ' 
 protested ; and the Assembly refusing to receive their protest, 
 there began a system of protest on the one hand, and of 
 rejection and admonition on the other hand, the end of which 
 could hardly have been otherwise than it was. The doctrinal 
 complication was greatly aggravated by the Act of Assembly 
 in 1732 regarding the mode of electing ministers where the 
 patrons had failed to exercise their right of presentation. 
 As we have already mentioned, this Act fell back upon the 
 statute of 1690, and placed the call in such circumstances 
 in the hands of the heritors and elders. This was strongly 
 opposed by Ebenezer Erskine in the General Assembly, and 
 so far on the valid ground that the overture on the subject 
 which had been transmitted to Presbyteries by the preceding 
 Assembly, had really not received the sanction of a majority 
 of the Presbyteries of the Church. But the measure was also 
 obnoxious to him and his friends on general grounds. ' What 
 difference,' he vehemently asked in the course of the debate, 
 ' does a piece of land make between man and man in the affairs 
 of Christ's kingdom ? We are told that God hath chosen the 
 poor of this world " rich in faith." ' 
 
 It is sufficiently plain that the banner of popular election was 
 here raised ^ in the face of the Church; and this too just at 
 the time that the yoke of Patronage, although still felt to be 
 grievous, and declared to be so in successive Acts of the 
 Assembly, was yet beginning to settle upon the Church, and to 
 enter into its constitutional and practical working as it had 
 never hitherto done. The Church in its corporate capacity 
 continued to protest against Patronage, and to profess an 
 
 ^ According to Sir Henry Moncrieff Wellvvood, this was the first time 
 that the idea of the popular election of ministers as a divine right was heard 
 of in the Church after the Revolution. ' There does not appear,' he says 
 (Appendix \.\.o Life of Erskijie, p. 434), 'during the whole intei-val from 
 1690 to 1 7 12, the least vestige of a doctrine, so much contended for at a 
 later period, which asserted a divine right in the people individually or 
 collectively to elect the parish ministers.' 
 
270 Sf Gives' Lectures. 
 
 eagerness for legislative redress. It continued to do this 
 even during all the time of Dr Robertson's administration 
 in the heyday of Moderatism, even up to 1784, But long 
 before, and even, at the time which we have now reached, 
 the Church had begun to adapt itself to this system. And 
 it was the consciousness of this growing change of feeling, 
 along with what also appeared to them as a decline of zeal 
 for orthodoxy, which lay at the root of the impending schism 
 which the Erskines were about to head. 
 
 Hitherto — if we except a small number of Covenanters who 
 had stood aloof in impracticable isolation — the Church had 
 remained unbroken. But now we approach a distinct crisis 
 in its history — the formation of the first secession. The 
 causes of this unfortunate event were obviously not one, but 
 many, and these deeply laid in the Church's life and history. 
 The majority of the clergy were plainly inclined, onwards 
 from the close of the first quarter of the century, to 
 accommodate themselves to the spirit of the age ; if not 
 to accept Patronage, yet to make the best of it; to 
 welcome new modes of preaching in conformity with what 
 seemed improved literary canons, more or less at variance 
 with the popular taste ; to relax or abandon the old rigorous 
 precision of doctrine; and to indulge in generalities which may 
 have helped to cover the half-doubts of some of them. 
 All this change was in a high degree obnoxious to men 
 like the Erskines, and they were already alienated in 
 feeling from the Church before they came into actual 
 collision with its courts. They saw in it, as they them- 
 selves said, 'a defection from Reformed and Covenanting 
 principles.' It was in the interest of such principles, and 
 as representing ' the true Presbyterian Covenanted Church of 
 Scotland,' that they entered upon their struggle; and it was 
 against such laxities, as well as particularly the support given 
 to Patronage, as they said, by the Act of 1732, that they lifted 
 their Testimony when they took their first step of secession and 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century, 271 
 
 met under the name of the Associate Presbytery at Gah^ney 
 Bridge, near Kinross, in December 1733. 
 
 It would carry us beyond our bounds to detail the various 
 steps of this first unhappy secession. They have been amply 
 described from different points of view. Ebenezer Erskine 
 followed up his speech and protest in the General Assembly of 
 1732, by a sermon in the following autumn before the Synod of 
 Perth and Stirling, which gave great offence to the majority of 
 his brethren, who carried a vote of censure against the preacher, 
 which was confirmed by the ensuing General Assembly. Along 
 with three others — William Wilson of Perth, Alexander Mon- 
 crieff of Abernethy, and James Fisher of Kinclaven — he pro- 
 tested of course against this sentence. The Assembly retorted 
 by summoning the brethren to appear before the August Com- 
 mission, express their repentance, and submit to the authority 
 of the Church. Still recusant in August, the Commission of 
 Assembly, according to its instructions, suspended the four 
 ministers from the exercise of their ministerial functions. In 
 the following November, being still disobedient to the voice of 
 authority, they were declared no longer ministers of the Church 
 — a sentence which they met by a still more elaborate protest 
 as to their principles ; and in December of the same year the 
 meeting of the Associate Brethren took place at Gairney Bridge, 
 and the secession on their side was virtually complete. The 
 following General Assembly sought to woo them back. The 
 Acts of Assembly which had been specially obnoxious to 
 them were repealed. Their synod was authorised to restore 
 them to their ministerial position — the Presbytery of Stirling 
 even went the length of electing Erskine as their Moderator, 
 and appointing a deputation to urge the office upon him ; 
 but all to no effect. The seceding brethren met with a 
 large popular sympathy. They were proud and confident 
 of the position which they had taken up on behalf of 
 what they believed to be the true principles of the Church 
 of Scotland. They issued still another Testimony, known 
 
272 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 as tlieir 'Judicial Testimony,' in the end of 1736 — still 
 further widening the breach between them and the Church. 
 Finally, in 1738, the Church took the matter once more in 
 hand, and summoned the seceding ministers, now eight in 
 number, to her bar. They appeared — but as a corporate 
 body or Associate Presbytery, with their Moderator at their 
 head — declined the jurisdiction of an ' unfaithful Church,' and 
 departed. In the Assembly of 1740 — but not before — they 
 were deposed ; and from the side of the Church, the act of 
 separation was completed, which had already long since taken 
 effect on the side of the seceders themselves. 
 
 It is of no use, at this time of day, trying to judge the merits 
 of this memorable quarrel on either side. If the Church was 
 precipitate and high-handed, to begin with, in dealing with the 
 scruples of the brethren, it certainly shewed a real wish to 
 welcome their return. But ruptures which are easily made are 
 not easily healed, and especially as in this case, where there 
 are not merely ostensible causes of opposition, but alien 
 principles in movement. The leaders of the first secession 
 from the Church of Scotland were really the representatives of 
 principles, partly popular and partly traditionary, which the 
 Church of tlie Revolution embodied. But then the Church 
 embodied other principles and tendencies as well of a more 
 moderate and flexible character ; and a struggle between the 
 two lines of thought and policy was inevitable. Nothing could 
 have prevented the collision. Whether a higher statesmanship, 
 and a more Christian forbearance on both sides, might not have 
 averted the catastrophe, it is needless now to speculate. But 
 one thing may be said, that the action of the Church in reference 
 to the first seceders, was of a far more generous and con- 
 ciliatory character than in the case of the subsequent Relief 
 secession twelve years later. 
 
 From this time onwards the two parties known as popular 
 or evajigelical and moderate rapidly developed themselves, and 
 the history of the Church becomes largely the history of their 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 273 
 
 rival relations. We can only in the most general way glance 
 at these relations and the leaders on either side. 
 
 What is known as Moderatism may be said to divide itself 
 into two epochs, during the first of which, extending to 175 1, Dr 
 Patrick Cuming, who was Professor of Church History in the 
 University of Edinburgh, was ' the chief ostensible leader of the 
 Church.' Had space sufficed, it would have been interesting to 
 sketch not only Cuming, but the two Wisharts, along with Pro- 
 fessor Leechman of Glasgow, who may be said to be representa- 
 tive of this earlier period, although Leechman survived long into 
 a later time. He and Principal Wishart^ are not only remark- 
 able figures in themselves, but, as both having been subjects 
 of prosecution for heresy, their names gather around them the 
 events in the history of the Church then most deserving of 
 notice. It is with reluctance that we must omit sketches 
 of these men, with the exception of Leechman, whose position 
 as an accused heretic is significant in the decade following the 
 secession of the Erskines. The accusation against Leechman 
 was founded on a sermon on Prayer, which he had preached 
 while minister of Beith. The sermon deals with the general 
 idea of prayer as a natural impulse of the human heart, rather 
 than with prayer as an act of Christian devotion. On his 
 appointment as Professor of Divinity in Glasgow, in 1744, 
 it was objected to him that he had failed in his exposition to 
 recognise the relation which all prayer ought to have to Jesus 
 Christ, and an inquiry was instituted as to his orthodoxy by the 
 Presbytery of Glasgow. There was plainly something invidious 
 in the movement from the first, as Leechman had no sooner 
 an opportunity of explaining his true object in the sermon, 
 than the charge against him fell to the ground. Before the 
 case was fully considered by the Presbytery, he carried it by 
 complaint to the Synod, which almost unanimously found that 
 the answers he had given to his accusers were satisfactory. 
 
 ^ He was Principal of Edinburgh University, as Leechman was ultimately 
 Principal of Glasgow. 
 
 R 
 
274 »5'/ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 The General Assembly confirmed the decision of the Synod 
 without hesitation, and the Moderator in ,his closing address 
 signalised the felicity with which the Church had met a case of 
 more than ordinary delicacy. ' Have we not seen,' he said, 
 ' the beauty of Christian charity in condescension on the one 
 hand to remove offence, and readiness on the other to embrace 
 satisfaction?' There is no doubt that the Church exercised a 
 wise discretion in this case, as well as that of Principal Wishart, 
 which had been decided six years before, and that while due 
 explanations were demanded, there was no disposition to bear 
 hard upon the accused. 
 
 Dr Leechman was evidently a man of very high, if somewhat 
 abstract and philosophical turn of mind, of the most devout 
 religious feeling, and earnestness of purpose. Lord Woodhouse- 
 lee says that his style, * with equal purity, had more elegance 
 than Hutcheson's,' and that his theological lectures were * the 
 fruit of great knowledge, and of a liberal and candid spirit' 
 ' He was a distinguished preacher,' according to Dr Carlyle. 
 ' His appearance was that of an ascetic, reduced by fasting and 
 prayer ; but in aid of fine composition he delivered his sermons 
 with such fervent spirit, and in so persuasive a manner, 
 as captivated every audience.' And to crown these other 
 testimonies, Sir Henry INIoncrieff Wellwood says of him, that 
 he was 'a man of primitive and Apostolic manners, equally 
 distinguished by his love of literature and his liberal opinions.' 
 He was a warm friend and ally of Hutcheson, the first and 
 not the least distinguished of our race of eighteenth-century 
 philosophers. Hutcheson took a zealous interest in his ap- 
 pointment to the Chair of Divinity in Glasgow, and at this 
 time made use of the expression which has been often quoted, 
 that Leechman would 'put a new face upon theology in 
 Scotland.' He represented, undoubtedly, a new type of theo- 
 logical thought to that which had been conspicuous in the 
 seventeenth century and was still exhibited by many in the 
 Church. But this is merely to say that he was the product of 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Cent my. 275 
 
 his own century. No one can read the account of his Hfe, and 
 especially of the touching close of it, given by Dr James 
 Wodrow, who edited his sermons after his death, without recog- 
 nising at once his Christian sincerity and his large-mindedness. 
 It is told that a young Oxford student was brought to see 
 him in his last illness. He was only able to speak in a feeble 
 voice, and had not many days to live, he said. * But you 
 see how I am. It is not tranquillity or confidence alone — it is 
 joy and triumph that inspires me.' His features kindled, his 
 voice rose. 'And whence,' he continued, 'does all this spring 
 from ? — from that book ; ' pointing to the Bible that lay on a little 
 table by the bedside. Then he added to his young listener : 
 ' You have chosen the Church for your profession. You are of 
 the Church of England ; I am a Presbyterian. The difference 
 between us is not great. If you are faithful in the discharge of 
 your duties, you will find your work a source of the highest 
 enjoyment. Your father was my friend. I have been always 
 interested in your welfare, and I am happy on my death-bed to 
 give you an old man's blessing.' 
 
 The epoch itself during which the Church obeyed the 
 leadership of Cuming, was distinguished by a clear acknowledg- 
 ment of the evil of Patronage. The consciousness that the 
 Act of Queen Anne had been unjustly imposed upon the 
 Church was, if no longer universal, still general. Cuming himself 
 made no attempt to defend it, while feeling it to be his duty to 
 accept it, and so far to work it, as the law of the Church. 
 In one of his addresses to the General Assembly as Moderator 
 in 1749 — he was three times Moderator — he says expressly, 
 'the law of Patronage is a hard law;' and according to Sir 
 Henry Moncrieff Wellwood, ' the party under his management 
 did not pretend to attempt the abolition of calls in the settle- 
 ment of ministers ; and always professed to require the call of 
 heritors and elders before they gave effect to a presentation." 
 
 * Appendix to Life of Erskine, p. 457, 
 
276 S^ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 It was i^art of his system also to appoint committees of the 
 Assembly — 'riding committees,' as they were called — to carry 
 out the decisions of the Supreme Court when the local Presby- 
 teries were disinclined to do so. The cessation of these com- 
 mittees, which were plainly ' neither sanctioned by constitutional 
 law, nor justified by any expression of expediency,' marks the 
 close of the earlier Moderatism. 
 
 With the turn of the century we emerge upon a new era. 
 Moderatism takes a new and decisive shape in the hands 
 of Robertson, Carlyle, and others. Literature finds a familiar 
 home in the Church. It is, as Dean Stanley has said, the era 
 of literary Churchmen. There had been in the previous part 
 of the century some Churchmen of intellectual distinction like 
 John Maclaurin — audior of the famous sermon Glorymg in 
 the Cross of Christ — and Leechman and Wishart, of whom 
 we have spoken. But it is only from about the middle of 
 the century that literature can be said to have become 
 a feature of the Church of Scotland. Every one is familiar 
 with Dr Carlyle's somewhat glowing description : ' We have 
 men who have successfully enlightened the world on almost 
 every branch of knowledge and of Christian doctrine and 
 morals. Who have written the best histories, ancient and 
 modern? It has been clergymen of this Church. Who has 
 written the clearest delineation of the human understanding 
 and all its powers ? A clergyman of this Church. Who wrote 
 a tragedy that has been deemed perfect ? A clergyman of this 
 Church ? Who was the most profound mathematician of the 
 age he lived in? A clergyman of this Church. Let us 
 not complain of poverty. It is a splendid poverty indeed. 
 It '\% paupertas fecunda virorum.''^ 
 
 This is very high-sounding; but it is not without warrant. 
 
 ^ This speech of Carlyle is found in the supplementary chapter to his 
 Aiitobiop-aphy, and was made near the close of the century — in 1 789 — when 
 the proposal for augmenting the livings of the ministers of the Church was 
 under discussion. 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 277 
 
 Beginning with Dr Robert Wallace, author of a Dissertation on 
 the Numbers of Mankind in Ancient and Moderii Times, which 
 anticipated Hume's essay on the same subject, and led the 
 way to later Malthusian speculations, there is a perfect galaxy 
 of distinguished authors to be found in the Scottish Church 
 during the next forty years, ' Robert Watson, the historian of 
 Philip II. ; Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome -^ John 
 Home, the author of the tragedy of Douglas ; Hugh Blair, 
 the author of the celebrated Sermons and of the Lectures on 
 Rhetoric ; Robert Henry, the philosophic author of the Histo?y 
 of Great Britain ; and lastly and chiefly, William Robertson, 
 the historian of Scotland, of America, and of Charles V. — were 
 all ministers of the Church of Scotland.'- Add to these Dr 
 Thomas Reid, the well-known head of the Scottish philosophy ; 
 and Dr George Campbell, author of the Treatise on Miracles, 
 in reply to Hume, and the Elements of Rhetoric, and the 
 intellectual picture is still more striking. It is only, as Dean 
 Stanley says, within 'our own generation that poetry, philo- 
 sophy, and history have found so natural a home in the clergy 
 of England, as they then did in the clergy of Scotland.' Nor 
 should it be forgotten that there were many clergy of remark- 
 able powers, although they do not stand out prominently in 
 the general field of literature — men like Dr Alexander Webster ; 
 Dr Witherspoon, author of the Ecclesiastical Characteristics, and 
 finally President of the New College, Jersey ; and Dr Robert- 
 son's well-known colleague, Dr Erskine, whose life has been 
 amply described to us by Sir Henry Moncrieff Wellwood. Dr 
 Webster was a man of great mental and social vigour, to whom 
 the Church is especially indebted for the institution of the 
 Widows' Fund. Whatever may be true as to his failings, 
 
 ^ Adam Ferguson never occupied a parish ; but he was hcensed as 
 preacher by the General Assembly in special circumstances, and authorised 
 to act as an army chaplain, in which capacity he officiated for many years — 
 from 1744 to 1757. 
 
 2 Dean Stanley's Lectures, p. 124. 
 
278 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 Webster was evidently a man of organising and ruling brain, 
 as well as of unusual popular and administrative gifts. Wither- 
 spoon's literary power, as displayed in the Characteristics, is 
 considerable. His irony is forcible and dramatic, if not very 
 varied or delicate. He was evidently a man of great mental 
 keenness and activity — a force in the General Assembly, as well 
 as in controversial literature, on the popular side. A story is 
 told of Robertson saying to him on one occasion : ' I think 
 you have your men better disciplined than formerly;' to 
 which Witherspoon replied : ' Yes, by urging your politics too 
 far, you have compelled us to beat you with your own weapons.'^ 
 Erskine is a stainless and noble name, in no respect more 
 so than in the honest and manly tribute of worth which he paid 
 to the character of Robertson after his death — a eulogy without 
 stint and yet without flattery^ — alike happily conceived and 
 expressed. There were still others, such as Principal Tulli- 
 delph of St Andrews, of whose eloquence as a speaker Dr 
 Carlyle gives the most flattering account, comparing it to that 
 of Lord Chatham in all his glory ; and Carlyle, who has 
 made himself so familiarly — some are inclined to think too 
 familiarly — known to us in his Autobiography. 
 
 Much might be said of the deficiencies of Christian character 
 in men like Carlyle and his associates. No one can say 
 that the pictures he has given us of social life and personal 
 manners are in some respects elevating, or in any respects 
 saint-like. They are of the ' earth, earthy ; ' and we shall not 
 attempt to vindicate for them a character that they do not bear. 
 Carlyle must be judged by his self-drawn portrait ; and Home 
 and Webster — whom he has drawn with a specially unfriendly 
 pencil — and others must be estimated in some degree by his 
 statements. The effect is all the more telling that it is 
 off-hand, like the touches which occur in rapid conversation, 
 rather than like any attempt at elaborate or formal description. 
 
 1 Account ofWitherspoon's Life, introductory to his Works, l8lS- 
 'Stewart's Life 0/ Robertson, p. 123. 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 279 
 
 But just as rapid conversation lends itself easily to exaggeration, 
 and points are thrown in for effect which were never intended 
 to bear all the meaning that may be attributed to them, so 
 Carlyle's sketches must be taken with reserve ; and when 
 allowance is made for the comparative coarseness of manners, 
 it may be found that the level of Christian principle and 
 character is not really so low as it sometimes appears. There 
 was possibly much even in a man like Carlyle — strong and free 
 a child of Nature as he was — allied to the higher life of which 
 he says so little. And in men like Dr Robertson, Dr Blair, 
 Dr George Campbell, and others, the religious vision must 
 be very distorted which can see anything but good. Dr 
 Johnson spoke of the former two as both 'wise and good 
 men,' and surely his verdict, in all the circumstances, may be 
 allowed to stand. Lives spent in laborious and fruitful 
 application to higher studies — in the cultivation of literature, 
 the amenities of social intercourse, and the diffusion of a 
 spirit of courtesy, charity, and mutual understanding in the 
 midst of deep-seated intellectual differences — are lives which 
 claim not only honour but Christian respect. Of their special 
 labours as Christian divines, Blair's sermons remain a monument 
 which it is the fashion now to depreciate, but which many 
 would find it hard to emulate ; while Campbell's philosophical 
 and theological writings have by no means yet lost their value 
 and significance. A higher specimen of the Christian minister 
 can hardly be conceived than Principal Campbell ; or a more 
 noble example of a luminous, thoughtful, and candid intellect, 
 consecrated to the highest objects, without any idea of 
 reward beyond the consciousness of devotion to truth and 
 duty. 
 
 But while we desire, upon the whole, to vindicate the 
 character of our Moderate clergy in the latter half of the 
 eighteenth century, we hold no brief for the vindication of 
 their policy. It was a high-handed policy, conceived by 
 Robertson in a statesman-like but eminently arbitrary spirit, 
 
28o Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 That Robertson possessed many of the powers of a real 
 statesman, it is impossible to deny. All the attributes by 
 which his colleague describes him are more or less of a 
 political order. There can be no doubt also of Robertson's 
 honest intentions to serve the Church and the country. The 
 authority of the supreme judicatory of the Church appeared 
 to him to be in real danger. If the voice of the Assembly 
 was to be disobeyed at will by Presbyteries, and temporary 
 substitutes formed for carrying out its decisions, the whole 
 government of the Church tended to lapse into a chaos fatal 
 to any order or efficiency. And so the idea of a bold and 
 authoritative policy seemed to a mind like his — sagacious yet 
 cold, commanding and firm yet unsympathetic — to be the 
 only means of rescuing the Church from perilous confusion. 
 Younger men, like Carlyle and Home and others, entered into 
 his ideas from a sheer wish to shew their power, and put down 
 what they considered as disorder and fanaticism. The policy 
 was so far successful ; but the success was of that nature which 
 is almost worse than defeat. It introduced order within the 
 Church. It crushed the revolt of Presbyteries. It silenced in 
 many cases popular clamour. But it quietly and gradually alien- 
 ated masses of people from the Establishment. 
 
 The deposition of Gillespie in 1752 initiated the new policy, 
 and began a second secession known as the Relief^ The Act 
 which led to this disastrous result was far less justifiable than 
 the ultimate deposition of the Erskines and their associates ; for 
 Gillespie was chosen as the victim of the General Assembly 
 — when it determined to exercise its authority against the 
 Presbytery of Dunfermline — in a purely arbitrary manner. Out 
 of six recalcitrant presbyters, it was agreed that one should 
 be deposed, and the lot, so to speak, fell upon the minister at 
 Carnock — a sincerely pious and meek-minded man, who would 
 gladly have lived and died a minister of the Church, and who 
 
 ' Relief {xoxn the burden of Patronage, 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 281 
 
 advised his people to return to it after his death, and when 
 the secession, which his deposition originated, had fairly 
 taken root and grown into definite shape. But there was no 
 relenting on the part of the Church, notwithstanding Gillespie's 
 conciliatory attitude, and his almost touching willingness to 
 return to its communion. The Assembly took no steps to 
 undo what it had done. The day had gone by for mild 
 expostulations and deference to conscientious scruples; and 
 the new schism, strengthened by the adhesion of Thomas 
 Boston at Jedburgh, a son of Boston at Ettrick, grew 
 and multiplied as the earlier one had done. In the course 
 of a short time, dissent had increased with such rapidity 
 as to attract the notice of the General Assembly. An over- 
 ture brought, before it in the year 1765, states that 'there 
 are now one hundred'and twenty meeting-houses erected, to 
 which more than a hundred thousand persons resort, who were 
 formerly of our communion, but have separated themselves 
 from the Church of Scotland ; ' and that this progress of 
 dissent is most evident 'in the greatest and most populous 
 towns.' 
 
 What has grown into the large mass of Presbyterian dissent, 
 was in short now fairly in progress ; and it is unnecessary, as it 
 would indeed be impossible, to say how far this unhappy result 
 is to be traced to inevitable causes, such as the love of religi- 
 ous independence and restlessness, so essentially characteristic of 
 the Scottish people ; and how far it is to be directly attributed 
 to the Moderate policy which henceforth for about eighty years 
 held the Church within its grip. The historian may indicate 
 lines of influence which have led to great results, but not even 
 the most acute and comprehensive capacity can disentangle all 
 the causes which have produced these results, and assign to 
 each their definite share. 
 
 After the triumph of Robertson's policy in the Church, its 
 annals become comparatively unexciting. The weight of 
 Moderate authority lay upon its councils, and the spirit of 
 
282 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 Moderation extended throughout its borders. And yet the old 
 spirit of Puritan earnestness was for a long time powerful 
 and active. This is strikingly shewn by the proceedings in 
 connection with the famous performance of the tragedy of 
 Douglas in 1756. This tragedy, now so much forgotten, made 
 a great excitement in Edinburgh in the winter of that year. 
 The fact that a minister of the Church should write a tragedy 
 at all — especially ' of the first-rate/ as Carlyle says — was a 
 startling novelty to many ; but the performance of the piece at 
 the theatre in Carrubber's Close, and the attendance of Home 
 himself and many of his clerical friends to see the performance, 
 was something still more startling. It was not many years 
 since the strength of Puritan feeling had compelled Allan 
 Ramsay to close this very theatre. A great change, there- 
 fore, is represented by the fact that this feeling should have 
 so completely vanished in the minds of ministers of the 
 Church ; nothing could more shew the advance of new modes 
 of thought. But, on the other hand, the fact that the Pres- 
 bytery of Edinburgh and other Presbyteries should not only 
 have prosecuted the offenders, but done this successfully, proves 
 that the old feeling survived in strength, and was backed by a 
 vigorous tide of public opinion. Carlyle's description of the 
 affair is enough to shew this. There appears to have been 
 no hesitation on the part of the Church courts in dealing with 
 theatre-going as an ecclesiastical offence. One of the ministers 
 of the Edinburgh Presbytery was compelled to acknowledge 
 his fault and submit to discipline ; Home was eventually driven 
 from his parish ; and Carlyle was charged with a libel which, 
 however, only ended in a rebuke. In the face of such facts as 
 these, it cannot be said that the Church had lost its Puritan 
 earnestness in the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 And so throughout the century it is to be borne in mind 
 that much of this earnestness, or at least of the Evangelical 
 enthusiasm associated with it, survived. A great deal no doubt 
 
The Chtirch of the Eighteenth Century. 283 
 
 passed away, or passed into the ranks of dissent, and helped 
 to swell its growing mass ; but Evangelicalism continued living 
 here and there in the Church also. The old and the new 
 were both active ; while there were those like Principal Hill, 
 who were strong supporters of a Moderate policy, and yet 
 Evangelical in the substance of their theology. Hill, it is well 
 known, became the chief exponent of this poUcy and leader of 
 the party after Robertson's retirement in 1780; but his Theo- 
 logical Lectures remain a monument of candid orthodoxy, which 
 has commended them to many who have no sympathy with 
 Moderatism. Even at the very end of the centuiy, the old Evan- 
 gelical life had not died out of the Church, darkened as is the 
 picture drawn by Rowland Hill in the Journal of his tour in 
 Scotland in 1798, of the state of religion from an Evangelical 
 point of view. The mere fact that the pulpits of the Establish- 
 ment were not shut against him or Simeon of Cambridge, any 
 more than they had been against Whitefield at an earlier date, 
 shewed that there were still those within its pale who sym- 
 pathised with their views. The Church itself certainly gave 
 these Evangelical teachers no countenance ; and an Act passed 
 by the General Assembly in the year of Rowland Hill's first 
 visit, effectually closed its pulpits for many a year to ministers 
 of other Churches, whether Evangelically-minded or otherwise. 
 But the very necessity for passing such an act proves that there 
 was still a certain activity in the Evangelical party within the 
 Church. 
 
 Nor are we to suppose that this party, while beaten by 
 Robertson and his coadjutors in their attempts to regulate the 
 policy of the Church, was at all powerless as a force within the 
 General Assemby. On the contrary, they rallied their strength 
 with great effect repeatedly, especially in the great debate on 
 Schism in 1766; and again in the exciting discussions which 
 followed Robertson's retirement, when the whole question of 
 Patronage, and its unhappy influence upon the Church, was 
 raised anew. The evils of the system are recognised as forcibly 
 
284 Sf Gi/es' Lectures. 
 
 as ever in these discussions by some who accepted it as the 
 law of the Church, no less than by its impugners. It was a 
 matter of course that men like Henry Erskine should denounce 
 the so-called ancient rights of patrons — ' as old,' he said, ' as 
 the Tory ministry of Queen Anne ! ' But it was significant 
 that Dr Hardy, who was afterwards associated with Dr Hill in 
 the leadership of the Moderate party, should in a pamphlet 
 published during the controversy in 1782 have proposed the 
 repeal of the Act of 17 12, It seemed impossible to him that 
 both ' this Act and the Church of Scotland should stand 
 together.' Nothing could well indicate more strongly what 
 an element of disturbance Patronage had been, or how little 
 a vigorous administration of twenty years had really done to 
 settle the disturbance. And yet it was only two years later 
 that the General Assembly instructed its Commission to drop its 
 remonstrance on the subject, and that the difficulty should 
 have gone to comparative rest for nearly fifty years, destined, 
 however, to a more terrible awakening than ever ! 
 
 But no further space is left to us for even such imperfect 
 notes as these on the later history of the Church of Scotland in 
 the eighteenth century ; and we must bring this lecture to a 
 close. Looking back upon the facts presented to us, there 
 is much to criticise, a good deal to deplore, but also a great 
 deal to admire and be proud of. 
 
 No shortcomings of the Moderate clergy can ever obscure 
 the literary lustre which they have shed around the Church, 
 nor have we any right to allow the one to dim the other. 
 But the higher clergy of the Church of Scotland in the 
 eighteenth century were not merely distinguished intellectually. 
 They developed in their social life and public career many 
 qualities of admirable manliness, directness, and vigour. What 
 they lacked was depth of Christian sensibility and width of 
 Christian intelligence. It may seem to many absurd to charge 
 them with want of the latter. But the narrowness not only of 
 their sympathy, but of their spiritual knowledge, had much 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Cetitury. 285 
 
 to do with their mistakes. If they had been more conversant 
 with the movements of Christian thought, they would never have 
 tried to guide the Church by hard and fast rules as they did. If 
 they had known more of the motives of spiritual action, they 
 would never have supposed it possible to restrain enthusiasm 
 by oppression, or ecclesiastical zeal by simply turning a deaf 
 ear to its remonstrances. There can hardly be any doubt, I 
 think, that Robertson was disappointed by the fruits of his 
 twenty years' administration, and retired in some degree dis- 
 gusted, both with the progress of dissent and the restlessness of 
 many of the younger clergy on his own side.' 
 
 It is sad, but it is true, that the chief difficulty of Scottish 
 Presbyterianism all through its history has been to combine 
 a cultured and catholic intelligence with enthusiasm, zeal 
 with toleration and Christian appreciation of the motives of 
 others. The Evangelical and rational elements in its corporate 
 life have failed to fuse themselves together so as to brighten 
 into a warm and earnest and yet sweet-tempered piety. The 
 popular and the Moderate clergy of the eighteenth century 
 stand apart. They may know each other well, and even be 
 cordial friends, as Erskine and Robertson were ; but their 
 principles never come into union. The fire of the Evangel 
 
 ^ Dugald Stewart's Life of Robertson, Appendix, p. 195. The passage 
 to which reference is here made has been often quoted. It is a statement 
 made to Robertson's biographer by Sir Henry Moncrieff Wellwood of the 
 probable reasons which suggested Robertson's retirement from the General 
 Assembly after 1780. We cannot quote the passage in full, but it explicitly 
 bears that Robertson was dissatisfied with the restlessness of ' the more 
 violent men of his party, especially in regard to a scheme, into which many 
 of them had entered zealously, for abolishing subscription to the Confession of 
 Faith and Formula ' — a scheme which, it is added, 'he declared his resolution 
 to resist in every form.' We have not been able even to allude to the great 
 controversy which occurred on this subject in the years preceding Robert- 
 son's retirement. The controversy was not 'within the Church courts, 
 probably owing to the influence of the great Moderate leader ; and this 
 fact, with the demands upon our space, has precluded our touching upon it. 
 
286 Sf Giles' Lectures, 
 
 does not mingle with the reasonableness of philosophy. They 
 remain apart, suspicious of each other, and judging each other 
 with asperity. This of course is true, more or less, of parties 
 in all Churches ; but it is especially true of the two parties 
 known as Evangelical and Moderate in the Scottish Church. 
 
 If we turn from the administrative and theological aspect of 
 the Church to its internal character — its worship and discipline 
 — it cannot be said that the spectacle is a pleasing one. What 
 may be called Church life — the feeling which binds the clergy 
 and the Christian people together in bonds of mutual action 
 and sympathy — was very low throughout the whole century. 
 There was not only no missionary enthusiasm, but no com- 
 prehension of missionary duty. Even so late as 1796, an 
 overture in favour of Foreign Missions was rejected in the 
 General Assembly. The well-known story of Dr Erskine 
 saying to the Moderator, at the close of a speech against 
 Missions by Mr Hamilton of Gladsmuir : ' Moderator, rax me 
 that Bible,' belongs to this debate. It was a striking com- 
 mentary on the character of the discussion. But there was not 
 only no intelligence of the duty of Foreign Missions, but no 
 thought of making any provision for the growing spiritual 
 wants of the masses at home. This non-appreciation of what 
 we now call Church extension was one of the worst ' notes ' of 
 the Moderate party, and indeed of the Church generally in the 
 eighteenth century. Churches were not only not extended, but 
 they were disgracefully neglected or abused. It is usual to 
 blame the niggardliness of the Scottish proprietors and heritors 
 for all that is abominable in the Scottish architecture of the 
 eighteenth century; and the blame no doubt largely lay with 
 them. But they merely reflected the general feeling. They 
 refused money to build beautiful churches, and they allowed 
 many old churches to be hopelessly ruined because there was no 
 compulsion upon them in the prevalent opinion of the time to 
 do better. The Scottish people had unhappily lost the sense, 
 from the Reformation downwards, not only of ecclesiastical 
 
The Church of the Eighteenth Century. 287 
 
 beauty, but even of ecclesiastical fitness. They had no thought 
 of making the House of God in itself a house of holy solemnity. 
 This was part of the reaction still unspent against the externalism 
 of Rome, and it may have been associated with so-called spiritual 
 feelings in the minds of some. But to a large extent it was 
 nothing else than coarseness of taste and a want of culture ; and 
 its effects were in many ways unfavourable upon the popular 
 habits. The attitude of the worshippers failed in reverence and 
 even respectfulness. Devotion was conducted with a careless 
 indifference of manner, if not of heart. The Scriptures ceased 
 to be read as an integral part of divine service, and the 
 singing was such as it is unnecessary to describe. Discipline 
 for certain offences continued to be publicly administered; 
 and although we cannot be sure that this open severity of a 
 simpler time may not have had deterrent effects that we can 
 now hardly estimate, we know enough to know that the general 
 effect was not good. While little, however, can be said in favour 
 of the devotional life or interest of the service of the Scottish 
 Church during the eighteenth century, there can be no doubt 
 that there was much devout feeling and earnest thoughtfulness 
 surviving among the Scottish peasantry. The Cottar's Saturday 
 Night is the touching picture of an imagination which was easily 
 kindled alike by the humour, the pathos, and the solemnity of 
 Scottish life. But it is no mere picture; it was a reality in 
 many a home, no less than in that of Burns's own father, a 
 man of singul?r clearness and manliness of religious thought, 
 as is shewn by the catechism he prepared for his children. 
 It is to this period also — it deserves to be remembered — that 
 we are indebted for those Paraphrases from Scripture which 
 have continued to be sung in the Scottish Presbyterian service. 
 Much may be forgiven an age which gave us the Para- 
 phrases, the plaintive and measured beauty of many of which, 
 such as the second and thirtieth, and the spiritual felicity 
 and completeness of thought of others, like the sixtieth, have 
 always appeared to me of rare excellence in sacred verse. 
 
288 S^ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 The first movement to prepare metrical versions of certain 
 portions of Holy Writ began as early as 1742; but it was 
 not till many years afterwards — in fact, not till 1781 — that the 
 Paraphrases were first used in public worship, after having 
 been revised and added to especially by Logan, the well-known 
 minister of South Leith ; and Cameron, minister of Kirknewton. 
 The existing collection bears traces everywhere of the tasteful 
 genius of Logan, which admits of no question, whatever may be 
 the truth as to the charges of plagiarism with Avhich his name 
 is unhappily associated. 
 
 There was a lack of open vision in the Church of Scotland 
 during the eighteenth century. She failed to realise the great- 
 ness of her mission as a National Church. She failed to wit- 
 ness as she ought to have done to the living love of a Divine 
 Saviour. But her spiritual coldness was a feature of the age to 
 which she belonged ; no Church was quite exempt from it. 
 And with all her deficiencies, she has claims upon our gratitude 
 and respect. If wanting in zeal, she grew in toleration. If 
 disliking enthusiasms, she cultivated literature. If she had little 
 Church life, she prized freedom and good sense, and wrought 
 no new bonds for the Christian conscience. If her clergy were 
 not adequately inspired by self-denying devotion in dealing with 
 the human soul and reclaiming spiritual wastes, they presented 
 examples of moderation and thoughtfulness and Christian 
 charity. And Scotland would have been a poorer country in 
 many ways, if many of the Moderate clergy had not lived to 
 advance its fame and illustrate the Church to which they 
 belonged. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE X, 
 THE CHURCH OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 TO 1843. 
 
 By the Rev. A. H. Charteris, D,D., Professor of Biblical Criticism in 
 the University of Edinburgh ; one of Her Majesty's Chaplains. 
 
 TT is not too much to say that no previous period in the 
 ■^ eventful annals of the Church of Scotland is more memor- 
 able than the three-and-forty years with which this lecture has 
 to do. 
 
 It is not a period rendered remarkable by a literary galaxy, 
 such as that of which the previous lecture took note. When 
 we look to the Church from 1800 to 1825, we can see among 
 its leaders only one name associated with the highest success in 
 any department of general literature. That one exception is 
 Principal Hill, who, as a leader of the Church, was strangely 
 deaf to the voice of the people, and strangely flexible in the 
 hands of some of the silent leaders of his party; but, as a 
 lecturer on theology, has left a treatise which is a noble monu- 
 ment of fairness, clearness, and learning. Dr John Erskine, 
 who ended his honoured life in 1 803, and Sir Harry Moncreiff, 
 
29° iSt Giles' Lectures, 
 
 who followed Erskine as the head of what was known as the 
 Evangelical party, were ministers and ecclesiastics of the highest 
 stamp, upright, wise, and consistent; but — unlike Carstares or 
 Robertson — they draw more repute from the Church than they 
 give to it. Its annals must record their names with honour, but 
 they do not lend it a lustre from their fame won in other fields. 
 So, too, it was in the later years. The historical works of Dr 
 George Cook, who succeeded Hill in the leadership of the 
 Moderate party, are candid and clear, but they are chiefly 
 remembered because, as we shall see, their author was a pro- 
 minent actor in memorable scenes. I do not know that any 
 one of even Dr Chalmers' books is likely to have permanent 
 value, although a select few of his greatest sermons will prob- 
 ably always be known and quoted. Other names will occur 
 as we proceed ; but this much we may say at the outset, that 
 our period is not remarkable from a literary point of view. 
 
 It is the changes which were effected in the years 1800-1843 
 that make them memorable. Within and without, the Church 
 was revolutionised. In her separate parishes, and as a cor- 
 porate body, she did and she suffered much. We have to 
 shew what good work she did, and also how her calamities 
 came from her own doings. No former lecture tells of a time 
 when she was so much left to herself. And therefore, when 
 we treat of the events of this period, we cannot ascribe Scottish 
 errors to foreign influence ; for they were Scotland's very 
 own. I hope to be judged with consideration for the exceeding 
 difficulty of my task. 
 
 (i) The first subject which rises into view is the change in 
 the school system of Scotland. After a century of neglect, 
 the Church set herself to make the existing schools efficient. 
 Hence began — during our period — the annual Presbyterial exam- 
 ination of schools, and after a little while (1819), the Annual 
 Report upon them, which continued with excellent results 
 until the Act of 1872 abolished the ancient connection between 
 church and school. Next (1803), the school salary of eleven 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century /^ 1843. 291 
 
 pounds, which had been the figure since the Revolution, was 
 raised to twenty-two pounds (subject to revision, according to 
 the price of grain, every twenty-five years) ; and it was made 
 imperative on the heritors of every parish to provide a dwelling- 
 house for the teacher, ' consisting of not more than two apart- 
 ments, including the kitchen ! ' This statutory provision was 
 happily supplemented in many parishes. It was during our 
 period that the Church of Scotland began to see that taxes are 
 not all, and to realise what a mine of wealth there is in the 
 heart of a willing people ; and one of the first shafts driven 
 down into the latent riches of that mine concerned education. 
 The voluntary efforts of the Church were guided for sixteen 
 years by two men whose names may well be enrolled in the list 
 of her worthies. The first was Principal Baird of Edinburgh 
 University, who stirred the whole country by proving that in 
 the Highlands and Islands alone, out of a total population of 
 between three and four hundred thousand, there were twenty- 
 eight thousand between the ages of six and twenty who could 
 not read, and eighty-four thousand of the same age who 
 could not write. For many a day the learned Principal toiled 
 in behalf of the long-neglected Highlanders ; and he gradually 
 succeeded in evoking so great liberality that not only in the 
 Highlands, but everywhere, the country was covered with a 
 network of schools. Normal schools were in operation ; school- 
 libraries (why so much neglected in later times ?) were founded 
 in many places ; returns of Presbyterial examination of between 
 two and three thousand schools were called in every year ; and 
 about 1842 the Church was nearer to John Knox's scheme, 
 as regards her ordinary schools, than she had ever been before. 
 Principal Baird was efficiently aided by Dr Norman Macleod, 
 whose fervid appeals, like those of his illustrious son and 
 namesake, were a blending of common-sense and Christian 
 charity and infectious zeal, such as stirred all hearts. With 
 the Gaelic Bible — itself a product of this century — and the 
 * Celtic Collection ' of suitable pieces for school-reading, the 
 
292 
 
 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 schoolmasters sent forth by the learned Principal and the 
 eloquent minister enabled for the first time the children of 
 one-third of Scotland to read in their own tongue the wonder- 
 ful works of God. It was not till after the Rebellion of 
 1745 that the Protestant Reformation was carried into many 
 districts of the Highlands ; and even at the beginning of our 
 century men printed their congratulations of themselves on 
 journeying without molestation among the hamlets and scattered 
 cottages of Celtic Scotland! I do not know that in any 
 country or district there was so great a progress as took place 
 between 1743 and 1843 in those parts of our own land; and 
 it was mainly due to the minister, the catechist, and the 
 school. 
 
 (2) In regard to Sunday-schools also, the Church passed 
 through nothing less than a revolution. There were some 
 Sunday-schools in Scotland before Robert Raikes — ^just a 
 hundred years ago — began his noble work. But the Church 
 had never taken up the subject ; and in the very end of last 
 century, when she found that the work which belonged 
 to her was being done without her, she was stung into 
 a most unbecoming passion. It is far from edifying to be 
 told that Dr Hugh Blair lent his gifts of style to the composi- 
 tion of the extraordinary harangue called a ' Pastoral Admoni- 
 tion ' (in 1799), which was meant to sweep from the kingdom 
 ■all preachers unauthorised by the Church, and all Sunday- 
 school teachers who had no commission from the Presbytery 
 of the bounds. The Assembly intended to crush the Hal- 
 danes ; to keep Rowland Hill from the pulpits ; and to scare 
 the people from countenancing those adventurers who wanted 
 to teach the Bible to their children. The Haldanes were two 
 gentlemen of property and of old family, who had given up an 
 honourable career on the sea in order to promote religion in 
 Scotland. Ready to spend and to be spent — Robert Haldane 
 alone gave ;^7 0,000 in ten years to the cause of religion — men 
 of zeal, energy, fortitude, and faith, they did more to bring 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century to 1S43. 293 
 
 Scotland into living sympathy with missions in heathendom, and 
 with the reviving faith in the Churches of the Reformation, 
 than any court of any Church in the beginning of this century. 
 Though they were not always right, nor always gentle in 
 expression, they were always upright and self-regulating men 
 whom no party could claim. As at the beginning of their life 
 they defied the careless parish ministers and the angry Assembly, 
 so at the end of it they publicly denounced the Voluntaries 
 who courted martyrdom by refusing to pay the Annuity Tax 
 which supported the National Church in Edinburgh. When 
 they went over the land preaching love and good works, and 
 with such power that Sunday-schools and prayer-meetings started 
 up behind them as they went, they were only doing what the 
 Church herself ought to have done. 
 
 The Sabbath-school movement was not paralysed by the 
 Pastoral. Schools grew and multiplied; they became recog- 
 nised as an adjunct of the Christian Church ; but it was 
 not till 1850 that the Church of Scodand had the courage 
 to undo her mistake of 1799, and take cognisance of the 
 Sunday-schools under the superintendence of her ministers 
 throughout the land. It is easier to do wrong than to undo 
 it; and when one sees the youngest and least experienced 
 members of congregations intrusted with the responsible task 
 of teaching those not much younger than themselves, it is 
 impossible not to feel that the Church grievously erred in 
 allowing the system to grow to its present dimensions with- 
 out her control. Is it not possible for the Assembly to go 
 back to one part of the bad Act which closed last century, and 
 to offer the supervision and examination of her Presbyteries 
 to both teachers and taught; not to check or choke, but 
 to develop the efforts made in the Sunday-school to discharge 
 the Church's duty to the young ? 
 
 (3) Though the Church was not formally concerned in the 
 Apocrypha controversy — for the British and Foreign Bible 
 Society, which caused it, was not connected with any Church — 
 
5 94 Sf Giles^ Lediird. 
 
 the dispute was so keen, and sent its roots so deep, that no 
 sketch of the Church life of the time would be complete 
 without some notice of it. The British and Foreign Bible 
 Society was founded for the circulation of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures alone ; but with the view of securing a readier entrance 
 for the Bible into some countries, the Society, from about the 
 year 1813, had given money grants to aid foreign associations 
 in circulating the Scriptures with the Apocrypha, and had itself 
 issued Bibles, with the Apocrypha sometimes interspersed, 
 sometimes appended. A still more serious fact, which in 
 the end led to greater bitterness, was that the practice was con- 
 cealed. Contributors were not made aware of the tactics 
 of the directorate ; and for this the permanent officials were 
 to blame. Robert Haldane had arranged for a French 
 Bible with canonical Scriptures only, and as usual had 
 contributed generously to it; but even into it the Apoc- 
 rypha was thrust without his knowledge. When this 
 became known in Scotland, the Scottish contributors were 
 indignant, and after fruitless private remonstrance (continued 
 for three or four years), they stopped their contributions as 
 the shortest way of bringing the Society to a right mind. 
 There was of course .a stormy controversy ; and pamphlets 
 were strewn thick as leaves in autumn. The Scottish eventually 
 won the day — won it step by step ; and the Bible Society 
 at last agreed to promulgate a resolution that ' the fundamental 
 law of the Society which limits its operations to the circulation 
 of the Holy Scriptures, is distinctly recognised as excluding 
 the circulation of the Apocrypha ; ' and that ' no pecuniary 
 aid be given henceforth to any Society circulating the 
 Apocrypha.' The leader of Scotland in this matter was 
 Andrew Thomson — one of those men whose power is 
 quite inadequately represented by the printed works they 
 leave behind them. His treatment of ' Infidelity ' and of 
 * Universal Pardon ' is lacking in mellowness and self-repression, 
 and his ' Catechism for Young Communicants ' wants simplicity, 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century to 1843. 295 
 
 tenderness, and fervour. To appreciate him, we of this genera- 
 tion must go back to the generation which it was his highest 
 ambition and his undoubted attainment to * serve by the will 
 of God.' When we stand anywhere on Scottish ground from 
 1820 to 1830, there can be no doubt that the greatest personal 
 power in the pulpit, on the platform, and in the press, was 
 wielded by that generous, fearless, wise, and unselfish man. 
 
 The chief result of the Apocrypha controversy upon the 
 Church of Scotland, whose fortunes we are following, was that 
 it publicly severed the ministers and members of the Church 
 from their Dissenting brethren. Up till that time, the mis- 
 sionary and philanthropic societies had been national, not 
 ecclesiastical ; but when the Scottish branch of the Bible 
 Society was broken up, the Churchmen, with scarcely an 
 exception, were found in the new Scottish Bible societies ; 
 almost all the Dissenters, save the Haldanes, clung to their 
 London connection. 
 
 (4) From home-work let us now turn to foreign missions. It is 
 a Church's primary duty to fulfil the Redeemer's last command 
 by preaching the Gospel to all nations. But the Confessions 
 of the Churches of the Reformation are all singularly deficient, 
 usually dumb, on this matter ; and the Westminster Confession 
 is no exception. Except that the General Assembly, in 1699, 
 ' missioned ' four ministers to accompany the ill-fated Darien 
 expedition, not only to labour among the Scotch settlers, but 
 also for the conversion of the natives, and in 1700 touchingly 
 encouraged them, I do not remember that the Church of 
 Scotland had ever specially addressed itself to foreign missions. 
 The Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge (1709) was 
 indeed specially authorised and encouraged by the Church from 
 the first, but it did httle for foreign missions, though (in terms 
 of a special bequest) it had usually a single missionary — David 
 Brainerd was one — labouring among the American Indians. At 
 the end of last century, missionary societies not connected with 
 any particular Church sprang up everywhere ; the London 
 
&g6 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 Missionary Society (of which a Scottish minister was the 
 originating spirit), in 1795 ; the Church Missionary Society, in 
 1799 ; the Scottish Missionary Society, in 1796, and in the same 
 year, the Glasgow Missionary Society. The Edinburgh Tract 
 Society, the first in the kingdom, was founded in 1794. In the 
 early part of this century, the work of those societies, and of 
 some others for Jewish Missions and for special objects (such 
 as one for the importation and education of Africans and 
 Asiatics), was keenly taken up by many people in Scotland. 
 Deputies from England came to plead the cause of the English 
 societies, and their Scottish rivals or friends also appealed to 
 public favour. The Serampore missionaries, and many others 
 who laboured in the foreign field, had some of their first and 
 warmest friends in Scotland. The efforts made in Scotland for 
 foreign missions before the General Assembly moved in their 
 behalf, were by no means contemptible. For example, in 181 7 
 — I take a specimen, to which many might be added — there 
 was raised in Leith, for Foreign and Jewish Missions and for 
 the Bible Society, upwards of ;^25o. 
 
 But there was great significance in the Assembly's action in 
 sending Dr Duff to India. It meant that henceforth the 
 Church of Scotland was to be organised as a missionary 
 association; and that its own courts were to be the directors 
 of the operations carried on abroad. 
 
 It marks a new position in the General Assembly, when 
 we find its admirable Pastoral Letter from the pen of Dr 
 Inglis, the founder of the mission, thus undoing, in 1824, 
 the rude rebuke of Missions in 1796: 'Having our own 
 hope in Christ and His salvation, it would be altogether 
 unnatural that we should not have a desire to communi- 
 cate this blessed hope to those who, with ourselves, have 
 one common Father — whom one God hath created. Is 
 it possible that we can rely on the merits of Christ as a 
 Saviour, for the exercise of that mercy and grace, by which 
 alone we can be delivered from everlasting misery, and 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century to 1843. 297 
 
 made partakers of everlasting happiness, without an earnest 
 desire to make known the way of salvation through Him 
 to others who partake of our common nature? .... Or is 
 it possible that the assurance, which is given us, of the 
 ultimate and universal prevalence of the Redeemer's king- 
 dom, should not establish our minds in the use of all wise 
 and righteous means for hastening that happy time when the 
 knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth ? ' 
 
 There are few things in the history of the Scottish Church 
 more delightful than the conjunction of men who founded 
 her Foreign Mission. It was no party movement ; no Mode- 
 rate denounced missions, even on the plea that education 
 must go before the Gospel ; no Evangelical needed to bid the 
 Moderator * rax him the Bible.' The mind of Dr Inglis, from 
 which the scheme started, like the goddess of wisdom in ancient 
 story fully armed, was the mind of the greatest of the Moderates 
 of his generation ; the missionary, Dr Duff, who threw up the 
 certainty of a distinguished career at home, and went away 
 through perils by sea and perils by land, to a career in which 
 his ardour was only paralleled by his industry, and his great 
 aims by his great success, was an Evangelical who owed his 
 conversion to an echo of the teaching of Simeon. 
 
 The principle on which the India Mission was organised 
 was new in itself, and had a completeness which new ideas 
 only acquire when they arise in a master-mind. The prin- 
 ciple was that, while the Gospel is to be preached to all 
 who will hear, education, with the definite aim of raising 
 up a native pastorate, is to be an integral part of the work 
 of the mission. Education was therefore not to be elemen- 
 tary only, but catholic and complete. Other Churches have 
 since that time more or less adopted the principle ; and even 
 those which did not adopt it are ready to testify to its being an 
 invaluable part of the work the Christian Church has to do in 
 India. The five who entered the Institution the first day Dr 
 Duff opened the doors, had swelled before 1839 into eight 
 
29^ Si cues' LcdureL 
 
 hundred ; and in our own time a far greater attendance on 
 classes conducted on the same principles, shews how well the 
 programme has stood the test of time and trial. 
 
 (5) Let us now turn from these general subjects to try to pic- 
 ture the position of the parish minister in the beginning of this 
 century. That not many ministers were as little concerned 
 about their duties, and as easily induced to find their chief 
 interest outside of their own parishes, as was Dr Alexander 
 Carlyle, the keen-witted incumbent of Inveresk, may be taken 
 for granted. That good men of another stamp lived, and 
 laboured, and died in the charge to which they were first 
 appointed, we know from the Memorials of Dr Somerville, 
 whose life in Jedburgh was of this sort until he completed 
 ninety honoured years. Up till 18 10, many of them had 
 incomes as small as Goldsmith's Village Pastor, but a govern- 
 ment grant of ;^ 10,000 a year sufficed to raise the minimum 
 to ;^i5o. Some of them were professors as well as parish 
 ministers; but after many years of dispute on the subject of 
 ' Pluralities,' the not very logical result was reached, that a 
 professor might not hold a quiet country parish, however near 
 the college, though he might occupy a city charge, however 
 laborious, as well as his chair. 
 
 The country owed much of its progress in literature and 
 agriculture and comfort to the parish minister in those 
 old days. Perhaps the greatest stimulus to social progress was 
 the institution of savings-banks by Henry Duncan, minister of 
 Ruthwell. He is one of the best possible specimens of the 
 older type of country minister ; a preacher who began with no 
 high idea of his mission, but whose conviction and fervour 
 deepened through the honest work of forty years ; a man of 
 science ; a writer of readable books ; founder of one of the 
 most influential of country newspapers ; and above all, origi- 
 nator of those noble institutions for the nursing of the poor 
 man's savings, with which his name will be always associ- 
 ated while industry strives for independence. 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century to 1843. 299 
 
 When we turn to more directly ministerial work, we find 
 one of its chief departments in the practice of catechising, 
 which was usual at the beginning of the century. Every group 
 of houses or district was the scene of a day of visitation, when 
 the minister personally invited each household to meet him in 
 an appointed central place — a barn or farm-kitchen — where not 
 only the children but all adults who were willing to undergo 
 the ordeal, were examined on the words and meaning of the 
 Shorter Catechism. In some cases, the minister spent the 
 night at the successive centres of visitation, so as to make a 
 regular missionary tour of his parish. The minister's visit made 
 an anxious time for many a man and woman as well as for 
 every child ; but in faithful hands it was an occasion of useful 
 teaching, both doctrinal and practical. Catechising still lingers 
 in some districts, especially in the North. In two country 
 parishes in the South I found it one of the most interesting 
 and profitable things which it fell to me to do ; but over the 
 country, as a whole, it is extinct; and the minister's annual 
 visit brings only a short service of reading and prayer. The 
 Sunday-school is not so robust an ordinance as the domestic 
 and district catechising which it has superseded ; and it is 
 scarcely doubtful that it does less to bring the public opinion 
 of the parish to bear on the success or failure of the home- 
 training of the children. 
 
 We turn from pastoral work to preaching. There is not 
 much doubt that, in the beginning of the century, the ordi- 
 nary preaching was of a cold and semi-philosophical kind ; 
 a teaching of ethics, with Scripture used as an illustration 
 rather than relied upon as an authority. But the century 
 was not many years old when a change began, and with 
 wonderful rapidity spread over the land. The work of 
 Simeon and Hill and the Haldanes was no doubt in many 
 cases effectual ; but it would have done little had not causes 
 of more general power been in operation. The French 
 Revolution, which stirred society to its very depths, and made 
 
3O0 5/ ales' Lectures. 
 
 all thoughtful men consider their waysj brought the mass of 
 the people to a new study of the Bible and a new appreciation 
 of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In many men unknown to 
 fame, that change which all the world can read in the life of 
 Chalmers was undergone ; and he who began to teach in 
 sermons easily written, and heard, and forgotten, was striving 
 ere middle life was reached to utter the thoughts that struggled 
 within him, and to declare the message of the living God. 
 The brilliant career of Chalmers, and the herculean, unselfish 
 labours of Andrew Thomson, were beyond all comparison 
 powerful in guiding this new-born zeal. But the change 
 was not confined to such as they. The party which by 
 tradition bore the name of Evangelical was not distinct, 
 either in doctrine or in practice, from that which inherited 
 the other name of Moderate. While Chalmers was toiling 
 in the wynds of Glasgow, and Thomson was smiting hip 
 and thigh the advocates of the Apocrypha or of gradual aboli- 
 tion of slavery, the chief of the Moderate party was maturing 
 the great project of a mission from the Church of Scotland to 
 the heathen. We all find it easier to give by sight than to give 
 by faith ; but the greater work of directing the sympathy of 
 the Scottish Church to realms unseen was distinctively the 
 work of the Moderates. It was a Moderate of the Moderates, 
 Dr Bryce, who laboured so hard in India to bring a mission to 
 Calcutta ; and not only was it the wise head of the Moderates 
 at home who planned the mission; but of those to whom, 
 in 1S39, Dr Duff dedicated his book on India, two-thirds 
 were of the same party. The great missionary records upon 
 his page of dedication the names of the committee : Brunton 
 (convener from the time when Dr Inglis died), Gordon, 
 Chalmers, Ritchie, William Muir, James Grant, John Hunter, 
 John Paul, and John Bruce, ' under whose wise, paternal, and 
 prayerful counsels the missionary enterprise of the Church 
 has hitherto been conducted with such unbroken harmony of 
 design, and such multiplied tokens and pledges of the divine 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century /'t' 1843. 301 
 
 approbation.' And of those nine men, only three left the 
 Church in 1843. When I know those things, and know how 
 the eloquent pleading of another Moderate, Robertson of 
 Ellon, was widely circulated and of great power in behalf 
 of the India Mission, I must express my deep regret that 
 even in our own day some writers upon missions charge all 
 manner of public and private misdeeds upon the Moderates. 
 There could be no better authority than Dr Inglis, of whom 
 Duff well said that ' his thoughts were never expressed till 
 weighed and re-weighed in the balance of a penetrating judg- 
 ment ; ' and he says : ' What I maintain is, that the crime of 
 either contradicting or culpably neglecting the peculiar doctrines 
 of the Gospel, is not imputable to any such number of the 
 established clergy of Scotland as to give the slightest ground for 
 supposing that ecclesiastical establishments have a tendency to 
 discourage Evangelical ministrations. My observation during 
 what has now been rather a long life, entitles me to say that, in 
 the course of the last forty years, there has been a gradual 
 approximation, on the part of the clergy, of what are called the 
 two sides of our Church, to a closer resemblance of one another 
 in all the great features of their public teaching — and it must 
 not be forgotten that any opposite testimony which seems to be 
 borne by our Dissenting brethren refers to a case respecting 
 which their means of knowledge must be comparatively small.' ' 
 If proof of the truth of those wise words were wanted, I should 
 point any inquirer to the fact that all the missionary, and 
 almost all the active committees of the Assembly, had Moderate 
 conveners, in the very year of the Veto, 1834. Dr Brunton 
 presided over Church Accommodation, as well as over Missions 
 to India. Principal Macfarlan was convener of the Colonial 
 Scheme ; and Principal Baird, of the Education Scheme. 
 
 (6) All parties in the Church combined in some deposi- 
 tions for false doctrine. Let me speak of one. Edward 
 
 ^ Inglis, Vindication of Ecclesiastical Establishments, p. 232. 
 
3° 2 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Irving seems to me, as I look back over those years 
 with such light as I can cast upon them, to have been 
 the man of greatest genius that played his part while they 
 passed over the world. I have heard from the lips of one 
 who knew him well, that he said, as he paced the college 
 quadrangle in his student days : ' There seems to me to 
 be a new style of preaching possible ; ' and of that new 
 style his sermons remain the first, last, and only specimen. 
 It is a strange blending of exposition, exhortation, poetry, 
 pathos, and scorn; now, in lofty speculation, speeding like 
 a meteor high overhead; now, as though it were the forked 
 lightning, cleaving at our very side some hoary erection of 
 human fraud or folly ; and now melting in the softest tears of 
 human sympathy. Nothing that Chalmers ever wrote rises to 
 the height of passionate meditation which is sustained through 
 Irving's Discourse on the Book of Psalms ; there is not in all 
 that has ever been spoken from a Presbyterian pulpit since 
 Maclaurin's Glorying in the Cross of Christ, anything to com- 
 pare with Irving's Ordination Charge in the little chapel at 
 London Wall ; and in some of his Discourses on the Incarnatioti 
 there is a grandeur of thought which seems to me to lift even 
 the reader into a purer air. What it must have been to 
 hear him, there still live those to tell who stood on the 
 hillside for many hours, caring not how the sun crossed the 
 sky while the spell of the great preacher was upon them ; but 
 even those who never heard him can say that the old prophetic 
 fire has not come so near us as when Irving lived and spoke. 
 His oldest friend, who has been so lately laid to rest in their 
 native Annandale, and who also brought from the banks of the 
 Solvvay some such scorn and pathos as one had believed to be 
 impossible save on the banks of the Jordan, never ceased to 
 say of him : ' He strove with all the force that was in him to be 
 a Christian minister. He might have been so many things ; 
 not a speaker only, but a doer — the leader of hosts of men. . . . 
 His was the freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever 
 
The Church of the Nifieteenth Century to 1843. 303 
 
 came in contact with. I call him, on the whole, the best man 
 I have ever, after trial enough, found in this world, or hope to 
 find.' It was this man that the Church he loved with so 
 romantic affection exiled from her bounds. It was really be- 
 cause his enthusiasm had carried him away, so that the decent 
 order of worship in his church was destroyed by a Babel of 
 many voices, which his simple heart believed to be the primitive 
 gift of tongues restored to a long self-impoverished Church ; 
 but the avowed ground of deposition was that he believed, and 
 in undoubtedly harsh words declared, our Lord's humanity to 
 have been preserved in sinlessness by the abundant gift of the 
 Holy Spirit, and not by the Incarnate Deity of the Divine Son 
 in His Person. Surely never was there better ground for 
 toleration than in this heresy, which was only the struggle of 
 a loving believer to find that his Redeemer was ' in all points 
 tempted like as we are, yet without sin.' 
 
 (7) A question which came into prominence in the very end 
 of last century, was one which has had more momentous results 
 in the Church than any of those already mentioned. It was 
 the question as to the way of enlarging the old parochial 
 system of the Church, so as to keep pace with the growth of 
 the population. There were tens of thousands growing up for 
 whom no church accommodation was provided, and who could 
 not be invited to come to churches that would not contain them 
 if they came. But they were not actually invited. Home 
 heathenism was the consequence. The enormous population 
 made it impossible for the old ideal of the parish minister, as 
 the friend and pastor of all his parishioners, to be realised. 
 Another evil result was found in Pauperism. In the old time, 
 the funds of the kirk-session — drawn from the weekly collec- 
 tions in church — were sufficient to maintain the poor of the 
 parish ; and the eighteenth century was more than half done 
 before the power of the heritors and kirk-session to assess the 
 parish for the poor was called into exercise. But as Dissent 
 attracted the population, the collections in the parish church 
 
304 . St ales' Lectures. 
 
 became too weak for the burden on them, and in large popula- 
 tions, especially in the south of Scotland, assessments crept in. 
 As Chalmers brooded upon this fact, there grew up in his 
 mind an enthusiastic admiration of the old parochial system, 
 and an exceeding bitterness against all and sundry who could 
 be charged with destroying or mutilating it. The masses who 
 belonged to no church — many of them lying low and besotted 
 on the ground, crying for food from legal funds — became 
 a nightmare and a daily torture to him. When he went to 
 Glasgow and found himself in the Tron parish of 11,200 
 inhabitants, with only 3500 of them connected with any church, 
 he declared war against every system and every practice which 
 made it impossible for him to carry the Gospel to all for whom, 
 as minister of the parish, he was nominally responsible. He 
 stigmatised the Town Councils, which exacted such rents for 
 sittings, that the poor man could not take his rightful place in 
 the pew ; he denounced Dissenters, who were fostering the 
 idea that it was enough to open churches for those who might 
 choose to come ; he rolled out his sonorous anathemas against 
 the unpatriotic Scots who would not see that legal relief of 
 the poor was destroying the independence and the provident 
 habits of the people. And what he preached, he practised. 
 There was a new church — St John's — opened for him in 
 Glasgow, in which the great orator was allowed to have 
 his own way ; with the result of shewing that the parochial 
 ministry drew the home heathen to the Church of Christ, and 
 that in his large and poor parish of ten thousand inhabitants, 
 the sum spent on the poor was never more than ninepence per 
 head of the population. 
 
 In whatever light we view Chalmers as a parish minister, he is 
 the greatest man who has ever borne that official name. As Dr 
 Inglis adapted Knox's principles of church and school to India, 
 Dr Chalmers applied them to Scotland with a generous devoted- 
 ness which swept away every obstacle, and a prayerful patience 
 which never doubted of the final triumph. He was not so 
 
The C/nirch of the Nineteenth Century to 1843. 305 
 
 unapproachably great when crowds were hanging on his lips, as 
 when by the power of a great conviction, and the example of 
 heroic personal toil, he moved the hearts of his people, as 
 one man, to rally round him, to act for him, to subdivide 
 the parish into districts, to make a record of the state of 
 every family, to make the parish-church and the district- 
 school centres of living personal influence upon young and 
 old, so as to verify his own happy phrases, by 'sweetening the 
 breath of society' through ' the omnipotence of loving-kindness.' 
 It is well to know what men thought and said of him : it 
 does us good to remember that Jeffrey said Chalmers' power 
 made him understand that of Demosthenes ; and that the 
 keen and critical Lockhart for a time forgot to analyse, and 
 could only say : ' In presence of such a spirit, subjection is a 
 triumph ; I was proud to feel my hardened nerves creep and 
 vibrate, and my blood freeze and boil while he spake, as 
 they were wont to do in the early innocent years.' But 
 these things might become mere traditions, as in the case 
 of Kemble or of Edmund Kean, whereas the principles he 
 revived, expounded, expanded, and verified can never cease 
 to guide men, while churches toil to bring the wanderers to 
 the fold of Christ. 
 
 When, therefore, the General Assembly, in 1S34, appointed 
 him to direct Church Extension, it was well known that the 
 illustrious Home Missionary was about to move the kingdom to 
 imitate his own example, and to provide not only churches 
 but ministrations for all the people, poor and rich, within 
 the shores of Scodand. The results were immediate and 
 amazing ; chapels sprang up on every side (187 in four years) ; 
 while the parishes which had been united in raising the needed 
 funds had learned their strength, their separate and their united 
 strength, and were filled with the glow of a common enthusiasm. 
 No longer units in action, they were now fused in one living 
 organism, as the members of one body. 
 
 It was a fair and goodly scene ; but in its advancement to 
 
 T 
 
3o6 ^7 ales' Lectures . 
 
 perfection, the Church Avas raising up enemies and difficulties 
 that strewed it with wreck and ruin. 
 
 First of all, the Dissenters took alarm, and hence came the 
 ' Voluntary Controversy.' The Seceders had done good work in 
 many a parish where they had ' seceded ' from the corruptions 
 of the Church in the hope of seeing it amended, or where they 
 had afibrded ' Relief from the evils of Patronage. But they were 
 changed since the first days. There had grown up in the minds 
 of Dissenters an idea that they had some sort of vested interest 
 in the corruptions and weaknesses of the Established Church ; 
 an idea that if these were swept away, there would be an unfair 
 blow inflicted on those denominations which were founded as a 
 remedy for them. Thus the still living historian of the Seces- 
 sion Church says : ' The Church Extension Scheme, which was 
 aimed alike at the prosperity of both denominations {Secession and 
 Relief), had led the two bodies to combined deliberation and con- 
 certed action, and increased their mutual esteem.^ It is curious that 
 an attempt to benefit the nation through the Church should be 
 regarded as an attack upon Dissent. Yet so it was. It was im- 
 possible but that some collision should occur when Dr Chalmers 
 tried to increase the Establishment, because many were ready 
 to say that Dissenting Churches were doing all that is needed. 
 To dispose of that objection, Dr Chalmers proclaimed the fact 
 that men were falling away from all Churches ; and at the 
 same time he shewed that the very principle of Dissent, 
 as only meeting a demand, incapacitates it to supply the 
 deepest needs of a nation. In oft-repeated and now well- 
 known arguments, and with unnecessarily stinging epithets 
 applied to his opponents, Chalmers shewed that an endow- 
 ment is equivalent to the poor man's seat-rent : and that 
 its existence enables a minister within the definite territory 
 of his parish, for which the endowment is provided, to go 
 from house to house offering the Gospel without money 
 and without price. He called this an 'aggressive ministry,' 
 which seeks out and ' excavates ' the home-heathen ; and he 
 
The Church of the N"inctccnth Ccidiiry to 1843. 307 
 
 stigmatised Dissent as the means of providing only an ' attrac- 
 tive ministry.' 
 
 Thus came the actual collision between the Church and 
 Dissent, which in its deepest meaning was largely political. 
 Scottish Voluntaryism is mainly a political result of the 
 fermentation among the masses during this century ; its dogma 
 of the severance of the ruler from religion originated with the 
 French Revolution, and is a part of the democratic up- 
 heaving which led to revolution on the Continent. Perhaps 
 it may be well on this hazardous subject to quote the words 
 of an admitted authority. In his life of Dr John Brown, 
 Dr Cairns says : ' It was not till the close of the eighteenth 
 century that the impulse given by the American and French 
 Revolutions, and the impressions made by the constant dis- 
 cussion of the claims of the Roman Catholics in the British 
 Parliament, began to produce a wide and conscious divergence 
 amongst the Seceders from the ground practically occupied by 
 their fathers.' ^ That ground, as is well known, was the support 
 of the Establishment principle. 
 
 There had been a solitary voice raised for this political 
 Voluntaryism so early as 1806 by a seceding minister in New- 
 castle, and there had been much unseen preparation of Dissenters 
 for the coming struggle ; but the blast which roused the conflict 
 was a sermon by the Rev. Andrew Marshall, Kirkintilloch, 
 in 1829. He sounded an assault upon National Establishments 
 of religion as unnecessary, improper, unjust, impolitic, a secu- 
 larising of the Church of Christ, and a setting aside of the 
 positive ordinance of the Saviour by which the Church is to be 
 self-supporting. In his most highly wrought passage there is 
 an elaborate contrast between the Church portrayed in the 
 New Testament and the Church in the condition which he 
 describes as 'incorporated with the State.' It closes thus: 
 ' The one is the bride, the Lamb's wife ; the other is more 
 
 ^ Cairns' Life of Broiun, p. 169. 
 
3o8 Si dies' Lectures. 
 
 nearly allied to her whose name is " Mystery " — the woman 
 who is arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, decked with gold 
 and precious stones and pearls, and who has in her hand a 
 golden cup full of filthiness and abominations.' 
 
 It was not likely that words like these would be forgiven ; 
 and the defenders of the Church rushed to the rescue. 
 Orators on each side went to and fro as with a fiery cross 
 over the land ; and courses of lectures in defence of the 
 Church were delivered everywhere. Those which were deliv- 
 ered in the great cities and afterwards published, are remark- 
 able for ability, and also for strength of sweeping statement. 
 They are fair specimens of the intellectual power and intel- 
 lectual ferocity which have so often characterised ecclesiastical 
 polemics in our country. The immediate politics of the 
 struggle centred in the Church's claim of state-endowment 
 for her new chapels, and in the Dissenting opposition to 
 that claim. The Dissenters gained the day. Exceeding 
 bitterness was the natural result. And when the Non- 
 Intrusion party tried, about 1839, to secure the help of the 
 Dissenters in curtailing Patronage and asserting Spiritual 
 Independence, those Dissenters, headed by Dr John Brown 
 — one of the most honoured of ministers, but the fiercest of 
 Voluntaries — declared that they could not as citizens consent 
 to liberate an Established Church from national supervision 
 and control. This curious position meant, that being Christian 
 Voluntaries, they wanted to play the part of an oppressing 
 ' Caesar ' ! And thus the majority of the Church, thwarted 
 in their claim of Endowment, and unaided in their struggle 
 for Non-Intrusion, were driven to assert their views of 
 Spiritual Independence more loudly. In this way, as Dr 
 Cairns puts it : ' The Dissenters suspended their own exer- 
 tions to diffuse Voluntary principles, believing that the 
 reforming party in the Establishment were doing their work * 
 (p. 196). 
 
 (8) We have seen that politics gave a great part of its force to 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century to 1843. 3^9 
 
 the Voluntary Controversy ; but we must now say that secular 
 politics originated and shaped the Veto Act, from which the 
 cry of Spiritual Independence and eventually the Free Church 
 arose. Politics came in necessarily at that stage. The Reform 
 Bill of 1832 gave the people new power in the State; and 
 they naturally expected greater power in the Church which 
 had always been the people's Church. The Reform Bill did 
 more ; it inspired the Voluntaries to denounce the Church 
 with fresh vigour as a remnant of feudalism that should not 
 be allowed to survive in the glorious days of the people's 
 liberty. The friends of the Church were compelled to think 
 how they could vindicate and popularise the Establishment 
 so as to increase its power for good. The Moderate party, 
 led by Dr George Cook, proposed to call into practical 
 use the long disused but never abolished right of the con- 
 gregations to present objections of whatever nature against the 
 minister who had received a presentation from the patron ; 
 of those objections, the Church courts to be the judges. This 
 was a significant though insufificient tribute to the change of 
 the times, and a confession that the rule of Robertson and 
 Hill had unduly repressed the people's rights. 
 
 But the popular party in the Church felt that more than this 
 was needed. The policy on which they decided was the Veto 
 Act of the General Assembly, proposed by Dr Chalmers in 
 1833, and carried on the motion of Lord Moncreiff in 1834. 
 The Veto Act provided that, when the majority of the male 
 heads of families, being communicants, dissented without reasons 
 from the nomination of a minister presented by the patron, the 
 nomination was null and void. Its key-note was that dissent 
 without reasons prevented any further proceedings in the settle- 
 ment ; so that the presentee was rejected without any trial of 
 his qualifications by the courts of the Church. I am far 
 from suggesting that the wish to popularise the Church was 
 wholly political. True sympathy with all that is best in her 
 history led naturally to it. But in the particular form of action 
 
310 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 which was adopted, we see the power of secular poHtics, The 
 natural course would have been to stand on the old lines of the 
 Church of Scotland ; to object to Patronage as a grievance and 
 a burden, and thus to constrain the Reformed Parliament to 
 extend the ecclesiastical suffrage. But this would have been 
 inconvenient for the new ministry. 'There is nothing,' says 
 Dr M'Crie, ' that the Voluntaries dread so much as the abolition 
 of Patronage.' And the Voluntaries were a large and resolute 
 part of the new ministry's following. It was the object of the 
 members of the ministry, therefore, to keep the matter out of 
 Parliament. Brougham, it is said, was eager to get the Church 
 to try her own powers ; and certainly his irrelevant start to the 
 floor of the House of Lords to eulogise the Veto as soon as 
 it was passed, and to declare it ' safe and beneficial and in 
 every way desirable,' looks very like this. There can be no 
 doubt that Jeffrey (Lord Advocate) and Cockburn (Solicitor- 
 General) threw all their weight into the scale. ' I am for the 
 Veto,' said Cockburn, ' and as what we are to stand upon 
 finally.' But they would all have been of little weight had 
 there not been in Scotland a man of the highest character 
 and of undoubted devotion to the Church, who was an 
 unswerving upholder of Patronage and a leading Liberal. 
 It was, unquestionably, Lord Moncreifif's attachment to the 
 Church and to Patronage, rather than his Liberalism, which 
 chiefly swayed him. But the result, in his advocacy of 
 the Veto, as the plan which would least injure Patronage, 
 united him with the Liberal politicians. Cockburn says : 
 ' I hear his evidence before the Patronage Committee not 
 only converted the Tory members to the Veto, but the 
 Anti-Patronage men to Patronage.' Upon Lord Moncreifif 
 rests the chief responsibility for the ills that so nearly ruined 
 the Church he loved so well. He pledged his reputation 
 as a great lawyer in behalf of the Church's power to pass the 
 Veto Act ; and with ill-fated persuasiveness he urged that if 
 ever the Church went to Parliament at all, the proper time 
 
The Chttrch of the Nineteenth Cent my to 1843, 311 
 
 would be when litigation had proved that the Veto Act was 
 wrong, because beyond her own powers. So it came about 
 that, by the lay-politicians, the Veto Act was made a law of 
 the Church, 
 
 By the lay-politicians almost alone. There was no living 
 ecclesiastic of sufificient power to hold his own, not to speak 
 of shaping the counsels of the party. Andrew Thomson had 
 always assailed Patronage itself; and had he lived, it is little 
 likely that he would have yielded to this desire to maintain it. 
 When a proposal to abolish slavery by slow stages was all but 
 carried, his famous speech, with its ' Give me the hurricane 
 rather than the pestilence,' took a public meeting by storm, and 
 made the movement for instant abolition, with all its dangers, to 
 be triumphant, in spite of the fears of politicians. One can 
 imagine how he would have spurned the Veto, Chalmers 
 was the only outstanding man, and he was an unwilling 
 convert to the Veto, He wanted anything rather ; wanted 
 popular decisions by the Assembly under the old law ; wanted 
 to go to Parliament for an Act to make assurance doubly sure. 
 But he was all for Patronage, characteristically saying that 
 congregations are fit to give a ' gregarious consent,' but not 
 to give a gregarious initiative. There was but one minister in 
 Scotland — he was not in the Established Church — who could 
 dare to speak all his mind ; and it was no common mind. Dr 
 M'Crie, the biographer of Knox and Melville, and the bosom 
 friend of Andrew Thomson, said : ' A Tory ministry forged 
 our chains ; a Whig ministry refuses, when it is in power, to 
 strike them off. Which of them are most criminal ? We hold 
 the former as enemies ; we denounce the latter as traitors.' 
 
 And so, under a mistaken belief that it was in the Church's 
 power, the Veto Act was passed, to gratify the people, to out- 
 flank the Dissenters, to preserve Patronage, to save the Whig 
 ministry from trouble. Though Dr Cook argued in 1833 
 that it was ultra vires, and would be overturned in the courts 
 of law, the dissent of the Moderate party in 1834 does not 
 
312 St Giles' Lee lures. 
 
 raise that question ; but there was left on record by the Dean 
 of Faculty, John Hope, a biting dissent, declaring that any 
 presentee rejected by the people, and not having his quali- 
 fications tried by the Church courts, would have a legal 
 right to the stipend and all other rights appertaining thereto. 
 
 And so it came about, as we shall see. But meanwhile, we 
 must speak of another rash course to which the sense of the 
 greatness of the Christian people, and of the Church's duty to 
 them, prompted the Church. The taunts of the Voluntaries 
 caused that to be badly done which might have taken another 
 and a better shape. The chief taunt was, that an Established 
 Church is fettered by the State and cannot expand herself — 
 cannot erect new parochial charges as an increasing population 
 requires. To meet this, the Church's ill-advised proceeding 
 was to assume to herself the power of making new parochial 
 charges, so far as to connect an ecclesiastical district with an 
 unendowed chapel, and to give the minister a seat in Church 
 courts. Chalmers was again overruled. He at first denounced 
 the idea of admitting unendowed chapels to * the high places of 
 the Establishment,' and he knew that all his plea in behalf of 
 Endowment as the poor man's seat-rent was annihilated by this 
 new measure. But it was very tempting. The Church had 
 been established before she was endowed; so that it was a 
 gallant attempt to assert her original power of recognising 
 charges irrespective of Endowment ; and as Chalmers believed 
 that Endowment could never be raised by the contributions of 
 the people, and as he was tired waiting for the State, he con- 
 sented to this impatient enactment. The daring deed was done 
 repeatedly. In 1833, the Assembly admitted ministers of those 
 Highland churches to which a yearly Parliamentary grant was 
 given] in 1834, it admitted at one sweep all ministers of 
 chapels; and in 1839, it received ministers of the Associate 
 Synod of Seceders. On the first occasion (in 1833), Dr 
 Cook was not alive to the importance of the step, and 
 acquiesced, though, it is said, against his better judgment. 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century to 1843. 313 
 
 One solitary dissent, by the Rev. W. R. Pirie of Dyce, 
 remains as a proof of his sagacity and his courage. He 
 was the first in Church and State to see what all Scotland 
 soon learned in bitter experience. On the subsequent occa- 
 sions, the Moderate party protested against the admission of 
 chapels as beyond the Church's power. 
 
 The storm soon came. Mr Robert Young was presented to 
 the parish of Auchterarder, and was vetoed by the people. He 
 applied to the Court of Session to have it declared illegal for 
 the Presbytery to reject him without trial of his qualifications. 
 His plea was that the Act of 17 12 revived the Act of 1592, 
 which provided that the Presbytery be ' bound and astricted to 
 receive whatsomever qualified minister presented by his Majesty 
 or other laic patrons.' His claim was to be taken on trial of 
 his qualifications by the Presbytery ; and he pleaded that the 
 Church courts had no right to allow the people's dumb 
 dissent to prevent his trials. After five months of pleading 
 and debate, the court by a majority declared the action of the 
 Presbytery to be illegal. After some time, the case was 
 appealed to the House of Lords, and there the judgment of 
 the Court of Session was sustained. Not only so, but 
 Brougham, in a long and rambling speech accompanying 
 the judgment, used many arguments and some phrases which 
 I can see no reason either to forget or to forgive, on the one 
 hand, or to regard as containing good law, on the other. 
 
 But meanwhile, the majority of the Church had committed 
 the Assembly to a declaration that they would stand by the 
 Veto. The settlement of a minister was declared to be a matter 
 purely ecclesiastical; and all jurisdiction of the civil courts in 
 regard to it was repudiated. * What the Assembly was concerned 
 with,' said Dr Robert Buchanan, in proposing the motion, ' was 
 not the wisdom of the Church, but the competency of the 
 Church in making such a law at all.' This unhappy resolution 
 led to all the irreparable evils that followed. Lord Moncreiff's 
 counsel to go to Parliament was forgotten. The majority of 
 
314 "S"/ Gilei Lectures. 
 
 the Church made the political interpretation of an Act of 
 Parliament a matter of ' Spiritual Independence.' Meanwhile, 
 another presentee who had been vetoed in the parish of 
 Marnoch, applied to the Court of Session to have it declared 
 that the Presbytery of Strathbogie, within the bounds of which 
 Marnoch lies, was 'bound and astricted' to make trial of his 
 qualifications. And the court accordingly declared that the 
 Presbytery was so bound. Whereupon the Presbytery recorded 
 in its minutes a declaration that it was bound to make trial of 
 his qualifications. For making this minute — they had gone no 
 further — the seven members constituting the majority of the 
 Presbytery were suspended by the Commission of Assembly, 
 and the Commission resolved to send deputies to preach in 
 their parishes. Then they applied to the Court of Session for 
 protection ; and the Assembly's deputies were forbidden to use 
 the church, churchyard, or school-house. This was the * First 
 Strathbogie Interdict.' After a while, the Court granted a 
 ' Second Interdict,' forbidding the deputies of the Commission 
 to preach in any of the parishes, or otherwise to molest the 
 complainers in the functions of the ministry. This last Interdict 
 was passed in absence, without debate ; was never enforced, 
 though openly and contumeliously broken by the deputies of 
 the Church ; and I suppose that all concerned were glad to 
 let it drop. The Court of Session had no right to prevent 
 the Church from preaching the Gospel in any parish ; and it 
 would have been well for the Moderate party if they had openly 
 made common cause with the Non-Intrusionists in publicly 
 denouncing this act of the Court as usurpation. Had they done 
 so, they would have shewn that they maintained Spiritual 
 Independence. By their supine acquiescence, they drove 
 the public sympathy to the mistaken men who believed 
 that every step consequent on the Veto was for Christ's 
 Crown and Covenant. 
 
 But the time for wisdom was past and gone on all sides. 
 The Church, by her majority, was defying the statute law, and 
 
TJi.e Church of the Nineteejith Century to 1843. 315 
 
 abiding by an incompetent and impolitic political act of her 
 own. ' Our dearly beloved Venerable proceeds to its annual 
 slaughter of Mother-Church to-morrow,' wrote Cockburn one 
 day. The Court of Session had abandoned its calm serenity ; 
 and the judges proceeded in a strange fashion to act as though 
 because 'for every wrong there is a remedy,' therefore, for every 
 wrong done by the Church, the remedy lay with them. The 
 Parliamentary parties had also lost their wisdom. Neither 
 Whig nor Tory leaders could see how great the crisis was, 
 or how imperative some remedial measure. The Duke of 
 Argyll made an attempt to have the Veto legalised. The Earl 
 of Aberdeen brought in a bill to recognise explicitly the 
 Moderate view, that objcdiofis of whatever kind might be stated 
 by parishioners against the presentee, and that the Church 
 courts must decide upon them. But neither of those pro- 
 posals came to anything, and the Church hurried to strike the 
 rocks and be rent in twain. The court ordered the Presbytery 
 of Strathbogie (which had previously after trials found him 
 ' qualified ') to proceed to receive and admit Mr Edwards, 
 and the Presbytery did induct him in January 1841. The 
 Assembly deposed the seven offenders. The Moderate party, 
 holding that they were wrongly deposed, made common 
 cause with them ; and after that time the battle was incon- 
 ceivably fierce. How Scotland rang with the war-cries ; 
 how in every parish the representatives of Non-Intrusion 
 declaimed with earnest eloquence against the doings of the 
 Court of Session, my time does not permit me to tell. 
 At an early stage, Dr Candlish saw that the people would 
 not be moved if the conflict were understood to be merely one 
 of jurisdiction between the courts of the Church and the civil 
 courts of law ; and intimated that it must be pleaded as 
 involving the privileges of the people as well as the rights of the 
 Church. And so it was. The Veto which was actually intended 
 to perpetuate Patronage, came to be treated as a kind of 
 Anti-Patronage ; and the question of the Church's competency 
 
3t6 Sf ales' Lectures. 
 
 to curtail Patronage by the Veto was described as involving the 
 Crown rights of the Redeemer. It was this which stirred 
 all Scotland as it had not been stirred since the days of 
 tlie Covenanters. The banner of the Covenant was sup- 
 posed to be again floating in the breeze, and in the church 
 and in the open air Scotchmen trooped to defend it. And 
 when at last, in 1843, the crash came, many of the best 
 of the ministers and a whole host of willing people left the 
 Church of Scotland. No other result could be expected, 
 one would think ; but some who did not know Scotland 
 had a hope of different results. I believe it may now be 
 considered certain that the Scottish advisers, clerical and 
 lay, of the Conservative government, which succeeded to 
 power in 1841, had a deluded hope that only a few of the 
 leaders of the Non-Intrusion party would leave the Church, 
 and that the rank and file would remain in the old citadel. 
 It is inconceivable that any one who had ever gauged the 
 force of religious feeling, or even who had any remembrance 
 of what Scotch Presbyterians dared and did in former times, 
 could believe that the men of 1843 would be detained in the 
 Church by the paltry terrors of the forfeiture of position and 
 stipend. Dr Candlish, in whose speeches were always first 
 and most forcibly announced the principles which afterwards 
 became the rallying-cries of his party, had for years announced 
 the impending secession, the Sustentation Fund for the support 
 of the clergy, and the attitude of necessary antagonism to all 
 Establishments which he and his friends would be obliged to 
 take up. When I read those speeches, so full of nervous 
 force, of passionate logic, and of unparalleled skill in selecting 
 the topics that would longest absorb the attention of the 
 people — and remember how the party took their watchword 
 from the busy brain of that born leader of men — it seems to me 
 unpardonable that any one should have believed it possible for 
 truants in any considerable number to fall out from the Non- 
 Intrusion ranks. The torrent was sweeping all before it j and 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century /(? 1843. 317 
 
 only a passion like their own could have roused against the 
 Non-Intmsionists the feelings of the Scottish people in behalf 
 of the integrity of the old Church. But the Moderates as a 
 party did not even understand the voices of the storm which 
 was shaking the house of their habitation. 
 
 It was here the parties were unequally matched. Dr Inglis 
 had been laid in his grave some months before the Veto was 
 decreed. Dr George Cook, who since the death of Principal 
 Hill had led the Moderate party, was without the qualities 
 needed for a time of commotion. He was learned, upright, 
 wary, sincerely attached to the Church ; and one who knew 
 him well, said in after years, 'he was the best business man 
 of a minister I ever saw in the General Assembly.' But he 
 had been identified with the Church's business and not with her 
 action \ and he never learned that reason is less powerful than 
 feeling in moving human life. Dr William Muir can never be 
 named without the reverence due to a dignified, generous, 
 unselfish life, devoted with every power of body and soul and 
 spirit to the work of the Christian ministry, and to the mani- 
 festation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ \ but he attempted to 
 occupy a middle position between those whose views were 
 irreconcilable, and as they drew away from each other, he was 
 left without support and without power. There was one man 
 more powerful than those named, who is said to be as much 
 responsible for misleading the government in 1843, as Lord 
 Moncreiffwas for misleading the Church in 1834. The Dean 
 of Faculty, Hope, did his best to verify his dissent from the 
 Veto, and to prove that it was bad law. In many a stormy 
 passage uttered at the bar, or diffused through the press, he 
 repeated this statement ; and at last he had as a lawyer 
 the satisfaction of seeing judges who had eulogised the Veto 
 coming judicially to maintain his view. But passion interfered 
 with his intellect, and prevented him during the conflict from 
 understanding that spiritual theory of the Church as possessed 
 of inherent jurisdiction by Divine appointment, which is the 
 
3i8 Sf Giles Lectures. 
 
 doctrine of the Confession of Faith, and as such is recognised 
 by the law of the land ; a doctrine which he had indicated 
 in his dissent from the Veto, and which he had in after- 
 days to reiterate, if not to rehabilitate, from the Bench. 
 There was one of the Constitutional leaders of whom I am 
 perhaps debarred from repeating here what I have said else- 
 where ; ^ but regarding him — Robertson of Ellon — I may quote 
 Hugh Miller's words : ' Dr Johnson threatened on one occasion 
 to raise a mob. . . . The man we describe, if there be truth 
 in natural signs, or if Nature has written her mark with no 
 wilful intention to deceive, could lead and head a mob too. . . . 
 We have before us the redoubtable Mr Robertson of Ellon, 
 the second name and the first man of his party. . . . He 
 has character, courage, momentum, and unyielding firmness.' 
 Though he was never called to lead a mob, he afterwards 
 shewed how he could do a harder thing when he revived a 
 dispirited Church. But he was not in the councils of the 
 Moderates at the last. He was excluded because he would 
 not approve of the second Strathbogie Interdict. 
 
 There were others of whom we cannot here take account 
 The gifted and learned and beloved Principal Lee was never 
 a leader of the party ; and some others, as Drs Pirie, 
 Paull, Bisset, and the younger generation, of whom John Cook 
 and James Grant were the best known, were not always 
 members of the Assembly or in the array of the battle. Dr 
 Mearns — clear and cogent — took a less prominent part after 
 his motion was defeated in 1834. It is not wonderful that 
 popular enthusiasm was with the other side. Its nominal 
 head and its great glory was Chalmers ; but its real leader, as 
 I have already said, was Dr Candlish. With him in close 
 array were Cunningham, furnishing lore and logic and terse 
 
 ^ Life of Professor Jaines Robertson. I ask leave to refer to the full narra- 
 tive of the Non-Intrusion Controversy in that volume (1863); and to 
 refer to my pamphlet on Spiritual Independence (1875) for an account of the 
 judicial and ecclesiastical principles raised during the controversy. 
 
The Church of the Nineteenth Century /c; 1843. 3^9 
 
 statement, and sometimes rough personalities, to the service of 
 his party ; Buchanan, a born diplomatist, and withal a man of 
 infinite pains in the mastery of details ; Dunlop, who dedicated 
 all his powers of legal learning and of lucid statement (not 
 usually giving the opposite side full justice) to the behoof of his 
 party, and afterwards of the Free Church ; and Gordon, full of 
 dignity; and Welsh, who seems to have been loved beyond most 
 men ; and Patrick Macfarlan, the only considerable ecclesiastic 
 who originally approved of the Veto ; and many others whom 
 it is not in my power to name this day. 
 
 Behind them, leagued with their leaders in many a hard 
 encounter in Church courts, was a vast majority of successive 
 General Assemblies. There was doubt whether all of them 
 would cohere till the end ; and accordingly a Convocation of 
 ministers was called in November 1842, at which, after many 
 days' debate and discussion, the whole of the members were 
 pledged to go on together to the end — out of the Church if 
 need were. This was not what many a man expected when 
 he went. The circular calling the meeting, said Dr Candlish, 
 * must ndt seem as if it were intended to commit men who may 
 come as to ulterior steps.'' The circular was open enough ; 
 but the Resolutions were very binding. It is only a few 
 months since any report of the proceedings was published ; 
 and now that we have it (in the Memorials of Dr Candlish)^ 
 we see how, in solemn enthusiasm, all the brethren, guided 
 by Candlish's skilful hand — with occasional bursts from 
 Chalmers and others — came closer and more close together, 
 until after ten days they emerged as one mass, molten in 
 the strong heat, ready to take the shape of the Free Church. 
 Of all who were prominent, there is but one survivor ; and it is 
 notable that he (Dr Begg), with manly consistency, held his 
 own then, as ever since, denouncing the Act of Queen Anne 
 as the source of all the evils of the Church. 
 
 After the Convocation there could be little hope of a peace- 
 ful solution of the difficulties of the Church. If there had been 
 
3^0 ■5'/ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 any such hope, it was dispelled by the Stevvarton case in January 
 1843. In this case the Court of Session, by a majority 
 (eight to five) declared that the Church courts had no power to 
 make quoad sacra parishes. Thus, as the Auchterarder case 
 struck at the root of the Veto Act, so did the Stewarton case 
 take the sanction of law from the other two Acts of the Church 
 in 1833 and 1834 — the Parliamentary Churches Act and the 
 Chapel Act. So far as the Court of Session could undo all the 
 work of the Church for ten years, it had undone it. 
 
 And on the i8th of May 1843, 45 1 ministers left the 
 Church of Scotland (289 being ministers of parishes), leaving 
 752 ministers, of whom 681 were ministers of parishes. 
 
 It was not a Disruption of the Church from the State. It 
 was a great secession, and may well be called a Disruption of 
 the Church, one part from the other. It has taught Scodand 
 and all the world how great is the power of an earnest and 
 united membership when it strives to serve Christ. But still 
 it is not on the whole a thing to be regarded with thankfulness. 
 It has weakened the Church of Scotland, which, if it had 
 continued strong, could have evangelised the nation ; it has 
 embittered ecclesiastical life, and thereby kept religion at a 
 low level ; it has encouraged Church Extension on the prin- 
 ciple of supply and demand, so that simple territorial work, 
 not thwarted by visible competition, is impossible ; and — 
 mainly in consequence of this competition — while Scottish 
 churches are more than doubled in number, those who are 
 outside of all churches are not fewer but more numerous 
 than before. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE XL 
 THE CHURCH from 1843 to 1881 a.d. 
 
 By the Rev. Archibald Scott, D.D., Minister of St George's Parish, 
 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 'T^HE story which I have to tell, if less interesting, is not so 
 -*- painful as that of the troubles which culminated in the 
 Secession of 1843. Though differing widely as to the principles 
 which by that event were vindicated or condemned, most people 
 now look back upon the contendings that led to it with surprise 
 and regret. In so fierce a display of the perfervidum ingenmm 
 Scotoruvi, candid critics find it very difficult to agree with any 
 party. We are repelled alike by the violence of those who, by 
 persisting in fighting their battle with weapons declared to 
 be illegal, exposed the Church to insult as occupying a false 
 position, and by the doggedness of others who, to maintain a 
 constitutional position, resisted claims which might have been 
 allowed, and more than once evinced a disposition to minimise 
 its rightful independence. We are amazed that the storm 
 should have invaded the calm domain of law, and that 
 judges, allowing themselves to become partisans, could not 
 
 U 
 
32 2 St ales' Lectures, 
 
 refrain from accompanying decisions, which in themselves were 
 impugnable, with dicta which were sometunes as indefensible 
 as they were intentionally offensive. And it is especially to be 
 lamented that both Parliament and Government should have 
 proved so unfit to deal with a really national crisis. Misunder- 
 standing, or haply misinformed of its actual gravity, responsible 
 statesmen made almost no endeavour to adjust a movement 
 which manifestly they could not repress,' and which issued in 
 a catastrophe which has embittered the national religious life 
 ever since, and threatens still further to rend the unity of the 
 Scottish Church, 
 
 The number and quality of the men who composed the 
 Secession, their personal influence, their distribution over the 
 country, made their withdrawal a serious calamity to the Church. 
 All over the land the people in multitudes, many of them 
 unable to comprehend or not troubling themselves to inquire 
 into the question at issue, followed the ministers whom they 
 loved or were taught to revere. The cause may not have 
 been understood, but the war-cry was catching, and the 
 sacrifices which had been made for it could not but raise it 
 in public esteem. It is simply foolish for any one to attempt 
 to underrate the Secession. The applause which greeted its 
 inauguration ; the popular support which it received from the 
 first ; the streams of wealth which poured into its treasury ; the 
 admiration which it excited in the best parts of Christendom, are 
 facts which only a most prejudiced mind can ignore, and which 
 prove the Secession of '43 to be a most memorable event, pro- 
 ductive of consequences which not the wisest seer of to-day 
 can venture to predict. It would be worse than foolish so to 
 deal with the Secession; for the fact that, notwithstanding it, 
 the Church continued almost without a pause the course which 
 had been entered upon before those troubles befell it, and that 
 with increasing activity and greatly augmented results, is the 
 most powerful of all proofs that, even tried by Gamaliel's test, 
 not * of men have been its counsel and work,' 
 
The Church from i843/t?i88i. 323 
 
 Seceding historians have represented the Secession as virtu- 
 ally the extinction of the Church, So Dr Hetherington declares 
 that ' every man of genius and talent and learning, every man 
 of piety and faithfulness and energy and zeal, followed Dr 
 Welsh from the Assembly.' ^ Dr Buchanan, again, avows that 
 ' the life departed from the Establishment, and those who 
 remained gazed upon the empty space as if they had been 
 looking into an empty grave.'- But whence, if such descriptions 
 be true, came the Church of to-day ? Time is a slow but sure 
 and impartial dispenser of justice ; and now when we look back, 
 after the lapse of nearly forty years, the most prominent feature 
 that arrests us is the manifest continuity of the Church in 
 everything that can express her life. Not a scheme was aban- 
 doned, not an enterprise either at home or abroad was demitted. 
 There had swarmed off a new and vigorous colony, but the life 
 and the work of the parent hive went on. A new Church, 
 equipped with Presbyteries and schools and halls of theology, 
 had sprung Minerva-like into being, but the body from which it 
 emerged gave no symptoms of disease or senescence. The 
 river rolled on, for a time in diminished volume, and ever 
 since with less noise than that which had parted from it; 
 but its silence was the token of its depth and power, and its 
 course of beneficence throughout this generation sufficiently 
 attests its origin as one of those streams which make glad 
 the city of God. 
 
 The minutes of that memorable Assembly and the pictures 
 that have been preserved of it by eye-witnesses, reveal a very 
 different state of matters, and a very different set of men from 
 what are described by the partisan historians. We can discern 
 in their chivalrous and indomitable determination to maintain 
 the Church the germs of her present prosperity. There was 
 much sorrow in that Assembly, but there was no cowardice ; 
 much concern, but no despair. Calmly amid the hissings of 
 
 "^History, vol. ii., p, 524. ^ Ten Years' Conflict, yoX. ii., p. 442. 
 
324 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 the mob, as those ' who felt they were suffering for future 
 generations,' they set about undoing one by one the blunders 
 which had caused their troubles. They had maintained the 
 constitutional rights of the people against the encroachment 
 of an ecclesiastical supremacy which would eventually have 
 strangled them, and they now asked the State, with which the 
 Church was in alliance, but to which in spiritual matters it 
 would never be subject, to take such constitutional measures as 
 would conserve the rights of the people and remove difficulties 
 in the way of the Church's progress. So without excommuni- 
 cating those who had caused this mischief, but deploring their 
 loss ; acknowledging the weight of their calamity and taking 
 their own share of the national sin that caused it, evincing 
 neither sign of wavering nor doubt as to the rightness of the 
 course they had pursued, they set themselves at once to grapple 
 with their circumstances and to repair the breaches made in 
 the bulwarks of the National Zion. 
 
 Certainly they had need of all their fortitude, for their work 
 had now to be prosecuted in the presence of active and able 
 and vigilant foes. Those who seceded never seemed to feel that 
 they were called to concede to those who remained the same 
 conscientiousness which they claimed for themselves. They 
 went out not as martyrs, but as if they were the hereditary 
 enemies of a Church whose bread they had eaten, re- 
 presenting its ministers as a degraded and hireling order of 
 men, no longer worthy to preach the Gospel. The people 
 were told by responsible leaders of the movement, that the 
 ' idea of the residuary Establishment doing anything valuable 
 for the salvation of souls was simply ridiculous,' and therefore 
 they ' should proceed substantially on the theory that provision 
 for ordinances by it was not to be taken into account at all' ^ 
 And so while the new Churches were placed as near as pos- 
 sible to the parish church, the parishioners were instructed by 
 
 1 Story's Life, p. 302 ; also Dr Candlish's Life, p. 306, 
 
The Church from 1843 to \.%,%i. 325 
 
 the official newspaper of the party, to 'regard the parish 
 minister as the one excommunicated man of the district, the 
 man with whom no one is to join in prayer, whose church is to 
 be avoided as an impure and unholy place.' Evidently the 
 martyrdoms of '43 were not all on the side of the Seceders. 
 Their sacrifices were ostensible, and were compensated for by 
 great public applause ; but the men who remained to maintain 
 what all had solemnly sworn to defend, had to undergo the 
 daily martyrdom of having their best motives misrepresented and 
 systematically outraged. The persecuting spirit of the people 
 was very strongly roused ; and wherever the Seceders were 
 numerous, it made fidelity to the Church a painfully trying 
 thing. In the North, the scenes which had occurred after 1690 
 and in the first twenty years of the eighteenth century, when 
 the Presbyterian polity was being put in force, were almost 
 literally re-enacted after '43, when the Church sought simply 
 to perform its duties. In September of that year, the mem- 
 bers of Presbytery who had met to supply the parishes of 
 Rosskeen and Logic, were assailed with stones and sticks. 
 In Resolis, on a similar occasion, a serious riot occurred, 
 in which one man was disabled for life, and another was 
 so wounded that he soon after died. In several other 
 places, men were assaulted and nearly killed for no other 
 reason than that they adhered to the Establishment. It 
 was no uncommon occurrence for parish ministers to find their 
 church-doors battered, and their pulpits defiled. Girls were 
 driven violently away from the wells by elders who would not 
 allow ' false Moderates to pollute the water.' Shopkeepers 
 who would not join the Secession, were treated in many 
 parts of the country as the Irishman is now dealt with who 
 refuses to join the Land League. The very children were 
 banned by their playmates at schools, and even recently 
 might be heard speaking of the Church in which their fathers 
 had worshipped for ages, in terms too opprobrious to quote. 
 To recall such things is painful ; to dwell upon them would 
 
326 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 be uncharitable; but they must be taken into account in order 
 to do justice to the men who in those evil times maintained the 
 cause and prosecuted the work of the Church. The very turbu- 
 lence and intolerance that raged around them was destined to 
 have a good effect both on their councils and action. It not 
 only chastened them, but seemed to crush out that combative 
 zeal which, prior to '43, aimed at domination and conquest 
 of all dissent. If here and there an individual was stung into 
 retaliation, he was speedily rebuked by the better spirit that 
 prevailed among his brethren. It was not by returning railing 
 for railing that the cause of the Church could be advanced, but 
 by a resolute endeavour to remedy all its defects, and to adapt 
 it to the wants of the country and of the times. Conse- 
 quently, after '43, the Church entered upon a course of steady 
 and continuous reformation in almost every domain of its 
 service. The whole period is one of healthy revival, in which, 
 unvexed by any desire to molest outsiders, it has tried to 
 develop its own resources and improve its own efficiency, and 
 the happy results may now be seen in the vigorous and still 
 reforming Church of to-day. 
 
 Certainly there was need for reformation. Arrears of undis- 
 charged responsibilities had been accumulating for generations. 
 During the century prior to 1834 the Church had produced 
 some sixty-three chapels, in face of nearly six hundred raised by 
 Dissent, to meet the wants of a rapidly growing population — 
 a fact which at Disestablishment meetings and in Voluntary 
 Town Councils was urged powerfully against the Church. In 
 the city of Edinburgh alone, eleven thousand unlet sittings in 
 the Established Churches — and these generally the cheapest ^ 
 — indicated the indifference that prevailed among the lower 
 orders, and revealed within the Church a state of matters 
 more alarming than any hostility that could be raised against 
 it from without. You have been told of the noble singleness 
 
 ' Cockburn's yoiirnal, vol, i., p. 93. 
 
The Church from 1843 to 1881. 327 
 
 of aim and pure enthusiasm with which Dr Chahiiers sought 
 to grapple with these evils, and how his efforts, generously sup- 
 ported, had resulted in the erection of nearly two hundred 
 chapels in large and necessitous parishes. It had even 
 a grander result — that of awakening the conviction that the 
 Gospel is the only power to raise man or masses of men, 
 and that of all the instruments for securing this, none can 
 compare with that of an endowed territorial ministry. Had 
 Chalmers done nothing more than lodge that truth deep in 
 the heart of the Church, he would have made good his title 
 to rank with its Reformers and founders, for out of that 
 seed was to rise a harvest of blessing larger than ever he 
 had dared to dream of. 
 
 The difficulties of the Church, confronted with empty pulpits 
 to supply, and empty churches to fill, were for several years 
 increased by the necessity of having to make good its claim to 
 those very chapels. It was not denied that they had been 
 erected by contributions received in its name, and had been 
 inalienably secured in title-deeds to its trust ; but the curious 
 demand was made, that the Church should be compelled to 
 cede a property of which as a sacred trust it was not at liberty 
 to divest itself. The reasons alleged were that the chapels 
 were erected by the party composing the Free Church, and that 
 the Church had now no need of them. A comparison of the 
 lists of those who seceded with those who remained will effec- 
 tually shew that Church Extension was a movement to which 
 the whole Church was committed, and which all parties in the 
 Church supported. The church-door collections for it in the 
 years preceding the Secession, varied from ^2445 to £,Z11^\ 
 in those immediately succeeding it, they ranged from ;!^240o to 
 ;^400o. In the extraordinary emergency of the Secession, it was 
 to be expected that several chapels should be left for a time un- 
 provided for ; but it was scarcely fair of the Seceders to plead an 
 embarrassment of which they were the authors as a reason for 
 despoiling the Church of its trust, and it was almost ludicrous 
 
32§ St ales' Lectures. 
 
 to cite individual instances of churches alleged to be locked up 
 and useless, when the parties who made the allegation refused to 
 give up the key. The whole contention seems to have been 
 only designed to damage and discredit the Church. The now 
 disclosed secret history of the Convocation reveals the grim 
 humour with which, even before it was advanced, those who 
 made the claim regarded it. Confessing themselves unable to 
 secure the chapels as the spoils of the contest, it was pro- 
 posed that ' they should be loaded with debt, which would 
 render them useless, according to the custom of a distressed 
 army to spike the guns which they could not carry off.' ^ As 
 matter of fact, when the protracted litigation ended, and the 
 chapels were declared the property of the Church, they were 
 found burdened with a debt of more than ;^3o,ooo. 
 
 The spirit of the Church Extension movement, far from 
 departing with Chalmers or languishing within the Church, 
 manifested itself in vigorous activity even in the dark days 
 following the Secession. Its operations were of course the 
 more pressing ones of relieving and fostering chapels that had 
 been enfeebled or emptied. Yet year by year witnessed a 
 steady increase over the preceding, both in the number of 
 chapels that were aided and in the number of worshippers 
 attending them. Even before the decision of the House of 
 Lords had been given, a most important step had been taken 
 with regard to the Chapels of Ease. You have been told how 
 these chapels were built in the hope that government would 
 furnish the endowment, and how all endeavours to secure this 
 had failed. The public purse was too empty, and Dissent was 
 too fierce. And if opposition from that quarter was too strong 
 for the Church, when supported by Chalmers, it was hopeless to 
 confront it now, when so much of its strength had gone to 
 animate that hostile power. Yet even then there was one who 
 had faith and courage to assert that the task from which 
 
 1 Candlish's Life, p. 253, 
 
The Church from 1843 to 1881. 329 
 
 Chalmers shrank as too gigantic might be accompHshed by 
 voluntary effort. Naturally sanguine, the fact that the Church 
 had emerged from the storms of the preceding decade, 
 stimulated in him the hope of great things to come. In the 
 newly formed Lay Association he saw an ' earnest of the new 
 and better spirit with which the whole land would soon be 
 imbued,' and so undaunted by difficulties which were truly 
 enormous, he dared to summon a Church, alleged to be 
 prostrate ' and dying of its own weight of corruption,' to a task 
 of national magnitude. 
 
 There can be only one estimate formed of Dr Robertson's 
 character and work. He was of the stuff out of which all true 
 Reformers are made — a man firm and unbending as the granite 
 of his native county, yet burning with unquenchable zeal. It 
 was not as an ecclesiastic but as a patriot that he gave himself 
 to his work ; fighting not for the advance of the Church, but 
 for the success of the Gospel. As one of the commission of 
 inquiry into the condition of the poor, he had discovered what 
 social unrest and spiritual indigence stirred beneath the vaunted 
 stability of our national prosperity. His studies in the writings 
 of the Fathers of the Church had furnished him with clear 
 perceptions of its fundamental principles, and experience had 
 grounded him in firm faith in their soundness. He had learned 
 enough of philosophy and history to convince him ' that the 
 welfare of society tends by an irresistible impulse, over which 
 legislation can have little control, to suspend itself in the signi- 
 ficance attached to man as man, and that the strength of the 
 empire depends upon the God-fearing and therefore manly 
 and trustworthy self-government of its subjects.' His keen 
 good sense shewed him the value of the instrument which had 
 been placed by Act 7 and 8 Vict. c. 44 in his hand. So we 
 need not wonder that his natural hopefulness, brightened by 
 firm trust in God and faith in the capabilities of a National 
 Church, should have made him even then prophesy of the 
 glory of the latter times for Scotland, 'when those who 
 
33*^ -5^^ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 were a burden to society would be converted into blessings 
 to it.' 
 
 The opening of his crusade was encouraging. Even in the 
 sad year of the potato famine, he could report out of a total sub- 
 scription, ^^5000 subscribed by the clergy alone, and ' an offering 
 of first-fruits from the enlightened zeal of the nobility.' But he 
 was soon to require all his enthusiasm. We know that it is a 
 fact in nature that ' we cannot raise the temperature of a thaw- 
 ing mass of ice till we have thawed the whole, and that not until 
 the ice has passed into water can we hope to change it into 
 steam.' As in all great Christian movements, a great amount 
 of Robertson's energy was absorbed in this same thawing 
 process. He had to complain, not of the frank opposition 
 of enemies, but of the indifference and dead inertia of friends. 
 But even from the first there went with him ' a band of men 
 whose hearts God had touched.' It would be invidious to 
 mention the living, and though no one can grudge to the 
 dead the tribute of being associated with his name, I prefer 
 rather by silent reference to suggest than recall them. Indeed, 
 no one could come in contact with his strong and noble 
 disinterestedness without feeling that honest resistance could 
 not be prolonged. His speech might be heavy, his manner 
 unattractive, but there was no resisting the man. So one by 
 one at first, but latterly in numbers, there rallied round him 
 the foremost men in the Church, the most influential of the 
 nobility and gentry. Through an unwearied course of fifteen 
 years he lived and toiled for his scheme, and he may be said 
 even to have died for it. His last official action was the 
 penning of an unfinished appeal for it ; almost his last words 
 breathed of its burden : ' Not the Convener, not the Com- 
 mittee, but the Spirit of the living God.' 
 
 He died in i860, but as a leader dies in a victorious charge. 
 The very momentum that had been gained made the line sweep 
 on without him. His death, deplored as a grievous loss, turned 
 out to be a real gain to the cause which he served. Its great- 
 
The Church from 1843 to 1881. 
 
 ness only dawned upon many through the grandeur of the life 
 surrendered for it. Much of the coldness which baffled him in 
 life melted away in his death. The sixty parishes which he had 
 left behind him were, under his successor, in another sixteen 
 years, augmented to two hundred and fifty. At this date, three 
 hundred have been added to the Church, at a cost of nearly two 
 millions of money. But those who have wrought most nobly to 
 produce this result have always alluded to their efforts as the 
 fruit of Robertson's work. The last Convener, a man in every 
 way worthy to succeed him, was on this point the most entitled 
 of our generation to speak ; and yet with simplicity, as truthful 
 as it was beautiful, Dr Smith ever spoke of his work as if 
 Robertson himself were directing it — as if, 'having died, he 
 was yet speaking.' 
 
 The reforming afflatus which in Robertson produced the 
 Endowment Scheme, proved in the life and work of Dr 
 Norman Macleod productive of as beneficent results. Though 
 he was too young to take any prominent part in the conten- 
 tions preceding the Secession, he was acknowledged to be a 
 power even in the Assembly of '43. In the years immediately 
 succeeding, when the policy of Dissent was to exclude and 
 ignore the Church in every great public movement, his services 
 were simply inestimable. Too energetic to be repressed, he 
 soon proved himself too able and too eloquent to be dispensed 
 with. One whose presence and power were eagerly sought, 
 both in the great May Meetings in Exeter Hall, and afterwards 
 in the Councils of the Evangelical Alliance, could not fail to 
 be recognised as essential to the successful advocacy of any 
 charitable or religious movement in Scotland. And wherever 
 he appeared, he served to raise the credit of the Church that 
 owned him. Translated to the Barony in 185 1, he found in 
 Glasgow a sphere worthy of his genius. While multitudes of 
 the most influential classes of society gathered around him, 
 large congregations, composed entirely of working men and of 
 the poor, hung Sabbath after Sabbath on his lips. Those 
 
332 . Si Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 who heard the Word were instructed in the blessedness of 
 doing it. His enormous parish was organised so as to secure 
 a complete visitation of its most destitute districts. Schools 
 were provided, mission stations were projected and equipped, 
 and by-and-by parish after parish was disjoined from it. 
 Things deemed impossibilities to others became under him 
 easily accomplished facts. Success in one of the most trying 
 of spheres helped immensely to inspire courage in others, and 
 ministers all over the Church felt their difficulties become 
 simplicities just in proportion as they allowed themselves to 
 come under the spell of his enthusiasm. When to his already 
 too heavy responsibilities was added the Convenership of the 
 Foreign Mission Committee, he threw himself into its work with 
 all the fervour of an apostle. With a voice like the sound of 
 a trumpet, he summoned the Church ' to the help of the 
 Lord against the mighty.' His labours in this connection 
 cannot be reckoned. I question if even yet we can form 
 anything like an adequate conception of the gigantic tasks 
 which he set himself, and the work which he attempted to 
 do. Equally ready to plead his cause in the obscurest parish 
 in Scotland, and in the stately halls of the Viceroy in India, 
 he may be said to have been consumed by his own ardour. 
 At an age when we were depending on the fulness of his 
 strength and wisdom, he fell the victim of his own enthusiasm 
 — a man mourned alike by his Sovereign and by the poorest 
 of her subjects, whom he felt it his privilege to serve. 
 
 No true Churchman — and many have done virtuously during 
 this period — will ever grudge my humble tribute to Macleod 
 and Robertson. They are among the greatest gifts that have 
 been bestowed on the Church of our day. The work which 
 they prosecuted was in every sense of the word a Revival, 
 whose effects may be traced in the immense development of 
 the Church around us. If during this period the revenue and 
 operations of the Home Mission have quadrupled; if the 
 Foreign Mission, deprived by the Secession of all its agents 
 
The Church from 1843 to 1881. 333 
 
 save one, is now strong enough to send its contingent — con- 
 fessedly still too small — of preachers and teachers, Zenana and 
 medical missionaries, to join at eight centres in India, one in 
 China, one in Africa, that noble army which from all points of 
 the compass aims at the conquest of heathendom for Christ ; 
 if the same progress and extension mark the operations of the 
 Jewish Mission ; if the Colonial Scheme, now consolidated, 
 exerts its beneficent influence in almost every quarter of the 
 globe in which our army and navy serve, or our country- 
 men settle ; if an ever-deepening sense of responsibility pre- 
 vails among the congregations and Presbyteries of the Church 
 — this result is due in no small measure to the influence of 
 these two men, who, differing in many things, yet twins in 
 spirit, and united as friends, recalled the Church to the 
 true significance of its position as National, and to its 
 burden and glory of service as a branch of the Church of 
 Christ. 
 
 So far the reformation of the Church is indirectly traceable 
 to the legislation of 1844. For though legislation cannot 
 create life, it can remove many obstructions in the way of 
 its growth. The fact that, without taxing any outsider, or 
 burdening a single conscience, a fourth of the whole number 
 has been added to the parochial charges of Scotland ; and the 
 additional facts that, in 1878, 129,700 communicants were 
 returned from these quoad sacra parishes alone, and that 
 ;^i 18,050 was reported in the same year as their contribution 
 to the Christian Liberality Committee, indicate the extent to 
 which the population has availed itself of, and appreciates the 
 benefits secured through, the operation of Sir James Graham's 
 Act. The difficulties which troubled the Church prior to '43 
 in the way of meeting the religious wants of the people, have 
 so far been removed. Let us now attend to the working of 
 another Act of Parliament, which in August 1843 was passed 
 to meet a difficulty quite as great — namely, the adjustment of 
 popular claims in the settlement of ministers. 
 
334 "^^ ales' Lectures. 
 
 By many in the Church, the Scotch Benefices Act was hailed 
 as a highly satisfactory and extremely popular measure. Indeed, 
 both in the Church and in Parliament it was strongly opposed 
 as too liberal. It was said to invest the Church with too ample 
 discretionary powers, and to reduce the right of a patron to 
 all but a shadow. Experience of its working, however, soon 
 revealed that what it gave with the one hand, it took away 
 with the other. Capricious decisions, involving all parties 
 in heavy expense, and producing increasing irritation and 
 secession from the Church, were its inevitable results. So, in 
 spite of all attempts made by the General Assembly to secure 
 by regulation its better working, the conviction only deepened, 
 that, though well intentioned, it could only operate to the 
 disadvantage of the Church and to the damage even of 
 religion. 
 
 As early as 1854, Dr Gillan vainly besought the Presbytery 
 of Glasgow to declare that the chief evils under which the 
 Church suffered were inseparable from the system of Patron- 
 age which the Act sought to administer. In 1857 he was 
 foiled in a similar attempt in the General Assembly. In 
 1859, Dr Lee ineffectually argued for a modified veto. But 
 thenceforth overtures brought the unsatisfactory working of the 
 Act before every Assembly, discussion became more frequent 
 and earnest, public feeling was roused, till in 1866 it was plain 
 that a movement was stirring which only required some outward 
 impetus to give it both direction and success. That impetus 
 was speedily supplied by the political events of the time. A 
 vast increase of political power had been conferred by the new 
 Reform Act upon the lower middle and Avorking classes of 
 the country \ and even men averse to change had to con- 
 fess that if the Church was to be in harmony with a greatly 
 enfranchised people, the dead-weight of Patronage must at 
 once be got rid of in some constitutional way. 
 
 In the Assembly of 1868, the ranks of the Patronage and 
 Anti-Patronage supporters met in their first earnest grapple; 
 
The Church from 1843 to \ZZ\. 335 
 
 and after a keen and honourable struggle, it was decided by a 
 very narrow majority to appoint the Committee of Inquiry, 
 which had hitherto been evaded or refused. Its report to next 
 General Assembly was decisive in favour of a modification of 
 the law. A prolonged and severe debate ensued; and when 
 the vote was called, the large majority of 193 to 88 sealed the 
 Church's condemnation of the most fruitful source of all her 
 evils, and committed the Assembly to all lawful attempts to 
 secure its speedy abolition. Petitions brought the decision of 
 the Church before both Houses of Parliament ; and a deputa- 
 tion, which had been cordially received by influential men of 
 all parties, on the day on which the second reading of the 
 Irish Church Disestablishment Bill had passed the House of 
 Lords, laid the case before the Premier. His reception was 
 courteous, but his reply, though afterwards interpreted to 
 convey a meaning which perhaps it did not bear, seemed 
 to justify the motion in next General Assembly that the 
 movement should be delayed till the government indi- 
 cated the course which they meant to follow. The Rubicon 
 had, however, been crossed ; the rights of the people could 
 no longer be tampered with. By a larger majority than ever, 
 the decision of the former Assembly was ratified, and from 
 that point onwards substantial unanimity prevailed in the 
 further prosecution of the movement. 
 
 The Anti-Patronage movement involved its supporters in no 
 small share of misrepresentation and reproach, as if it origi- 
 nated in, and was governed solely by, hostility to Dissenting com- 
 munions. Never was reproach more unmerited. If any policy 
 dictated this movement, it was that of conciliating Dissenters. 
 Indeed, there were times when it was felt that conciliation of 
 outsiders was carried on at the risk of alienating many who 
 were within. Its promoters could not hope that union of sun- 
 dered Presbyterians would immediately follow the abolition of 
 Patronage, but it was plain that until it was taken away, all 
 possible approach to union was barred. As an indication of 
 
336 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 their hope and intention, at this very stage, upon the call of the 
 late Lord Gordon, a resolution was passed, and a committee 
 was appointed to promote the union of churches that had 
 seceded from the Establishment on account of Patronage, and 
 that still adhered to its Confession and system of worship. 
 
 At this period there were probably not fifty men in the whole 
 ranks of the Church who did not most earnestly desire that 
 Dissenting Presbyterians should be embraced in this movement. 
 Never at any time since 1843 had the Church assumed an 
 attitude unfriendly to Dissent. It was remarked, even at that 
 time, that no feeling save that of affectionate regret found 
 expression in regard to those who seceded. In self-defence, 
 it had to rescind and remit to a committee the Act anent 
 * Ministerial Communion,' repealed only a year before ; but 
 no accusation could be more unfair or undeserved than 
 that of Dr Candlish, that by so doing, 'they have virtually 
 cut off all Christendom from their communion.' ^ His party, 
 though dominant for years, made no effort to abolish the 
 obnoxious Act, till in 1842, when affairs were drawing to 
 a crisis, policy suggested its repeal as likely to appease 
 their former enemies. The Church was too leavened by 
 the very spirit against which the foolish Act of 1799 '^^^ 
 directed to regard it with favour. Even then, friendly co- 
 operation with other bodies, when practicable, was not only 
 sanctioned but enjoined. Every subsequent enactment has 
 been in the direction of facilitating and promoting co-operation, 
 and at this date the pulpits of the Establishment are practically 
 more open to ministers of other communions, than those of 
 Dissenting denominations can be said to be to ourselves. 
 
 It was with no unfriendly eye that the Church regarded the 
 first gathering together of the scattered streams of Scottish 
 Presbyterianism, in the union of the churches of Erskine and 
 Gillespie in 1847. Again, when in 1863, the first proposal for 
 
 1 Candlish's Life, p. 306, 
 
The Church from 1843 /<? 1881, 337 
 
 union between the United denominations and the Free Church 
 was launched, there were very many within the Church who, 
 wearied with the divisions of a family that ought to be united, 
 really hoped that a better day was dawning for all. It seemed 
 to them that if honestly entered upon and honourably carried 
 out, the movement must develop into negotiations for union im- 
 mensely more comprehensive. The United Presbyterian on one 
 important point was as far removed from the Free, as was that 
 Church from the Establishment on another. It was but reason- 
 able to expect that the Free Church would be as ready to 
 consider with their old friends the principle of Christ's Headship 
 over the Church, as they were prepared to consider with their 
 recent foes the twin principle of Christ's Headship over the 
 State. But alas, the opportunity cannot even be said to have 
 been lost ; it was deliberately, by both negotiating parties, 
 thrown away. They could not inaugurate their diplomacy 
 without emitting declarations which, while excluding the 
 Church, were purposely offensive. Her professors were here- 
 tics, her ministers were ritualists in disguise. And so by the 
 time that the Anti-Patronage movement had assumed definite 
 form, it was evident that co-operation was simply impossible. 
 Lord Gordon's ' olive branch ' was met by resolutions breathing 
 a spirit of determined hostility to the Church. It was the 
 humiliation of the Church, and not union with it, that was 
 desired ; and so it was plain that if the Church were to succeed 
 in obtaining the abolition of Patronage, it would be against the 
 combined opposition of those whose fathers found it a yoke 
 too grievous to be borne. 
 
 A Conservative government has the credit of undoing the 
 mischievous legislation which an old Tory government had 
 imposed. On 19th May 1874, a Bill to abolish Patronage and 
 repeal the Act of Queen Anne was introduced by the Duke of 
 Richmond into the House of Lords, and through all its subse- 
 quent stages it was ably supported by the Duke of Argyll. It 
 was discussed by Peers on both sides of the House with 
 
 v 
 
So^ •S'/ Gtks^ Lectures. 
 
 a general desire to produce a measure that would be con- 
 sonant to the principles of the Church, and the genius of 
 the people of Scotland. The result was that, really amended 
 in some important points, the Bill left the Lords vesting the 
 patronage in the congregation, leaving the Church to define and 
 settle who are its members and who are entitled to be called 
 adherents. Direct opposition to a measure so consistent with 
 the traditions and principles of all Presbyterians in Scotland was 
 impossible in the Commons, so the mode of assault was a 
 plausible motion for delay and inquiry. It became evident, 
 however, that the real objection lay in the new and monstrous 
 doctrine that to do anything favourable to the Church as a 
 national institution is against the interests of those who live by 
 opposing it. It was strange to find this doctrine advocated by 
 men who had just settled, in the interest of the public good and 
 economy, the question of national education in a manner which 
 pressed hard upon many schools and teachers hitherto voluntarily 
 supported. Unprejudiced people could not see that Dissenters 
 had any just vested interest in the abuses of the Church, but 
 they could see that the Bill most highly complimented Dissenters 
 in embodying the very principles for which they had so nobly 
 contended, and in securing, not to the actual ministers and 
 members of the Church, but to the whole Presbyterian polity 
 of the people, a statute which shewed that the old Church 
 of the nation rests still, where, after persecution and martyr- 
 dom, their fathers and ours re-established it, on the settle- 
 ment of 1690. It is too soon to judge of an Act which has so 
 recently come into operation. It has failed, as was foreseen 
 from the first, to conciliate ecclesiastical opponents, but an 
 immense majority of the people of Scotland rejoice in its 
 passing ; and yet there is hope that opponents may come to 
 acknowledge that the removal of an ancient. grievance was not 
 a sectional triumph, but a truly national gain. 
 
 With the Secession of '43, the troubles of the Church as to 
 civil jurisdiction completely ended. In the declamations of 
 
The C}ui7'ch from 1843 to 1881. 339 
 
 that time, and even yet, it is asserted that her peace was only 
 purchased by sinful submission ; but now that in the course of 
 a generation, passion has had time to cool, and prejudice to 
 clear away, men are coming to see that from a contest which, 
 undoubtedly originating in a demand for a popular right, ended 
 in a ' demand for a clerical, which would eventually have 
 scattered popular liberty to the winds,' the Church has emerged 
 with its constitutional liberties intact. Its history since the 
 Secession is a triumphant vindication of its independence. In 
 every case of discipline in which the civil court has been asked 
 to interfere with its decisions, it has declined, on the ground 
 that the proceedings complained of were within the exclusive 
 jurisdiction of the Church. Three times during that period have 
 the Seceders of '43 been before the civil courts in reference 
 to a spiritual sentence complained of as illegally pronounced ; 
 and against their defence that the court could not interfere 
 in sentences pronounced as a matter of Church discipHne by an 
 association of Christians tolerated by law, it was held that a 
 voluntary association of Christians has no jurisdiction, in the 
 proper legal sense of the term, and that sentences of suspension 
 and deposition pronounced by them were not such spiritual 
 acts as could not be taken cognisance of by the civil courts. 
 
 With such decisions staring us in the face, we might surely 
 expect that spiritual independence should be left by the Free 
 Church as ' open ' a question in relation to the Establishment 
 as the great majority of its members are willing to leave the 
 question of Christ's Headship over the State in their relation 
 to the Voluntaries. It is plain that secession can never secure 
 such spiritual independence as is claimed, and that the alliance 
 of Church with State in Scotland is not inimical to it. The 
 Act of 1874, which repealed the Act of Queen Anne restoring 
 Patronage, may be said to have revived all the ancient decla- 
 rations of Parliament on the subject of the Church's Rights. 
 It can henceforth only serve the purpose of a partisan to 
 describe that Act as Erastian. Mr Gladstone, a most com- 
 
340 Sf Giles'' Lectures. 
 
 petent judge, in his speech of July 6, 1874, objected to the 
 Bill ' as intended to commit to the Church powers not pos- 
 sessed by any voluntary religious communion in the country.' 
 The Duke of Argyll, again, in a paper reprinted from the 
 Contemp07'ary Review in 1878, testifies that the effect of the 
 Act is to ' enable advocates of spiritual independence,' which 
 he thinks ' too wide, too absolute to be theoretically true,' to 
 affirm their view within the Establishment without any practical 
 contradiction from the law.' Surely blindness in part has 
 happened to those who do not see what an enormous advantage 
 is thus secured, not only to the members of the Established 
 Church, but to that Presbyterian polity and creed, which nine- 
 tenths even of Scottish Dissenters profess alike to revere and 
 to believe. 
 
 During this last period, the Church has favoured no political 
 party, and if wisely guided, it will not attach itself to any. Its 
 ministers and congregations represent all shades of political 
 opinion in very much the same proportions as they exist in 
 the country. Consequently, in regard to party influence, the 
 Church is virtually powerless ; and if political influence be an 
 advantage to a professedly spiritual society, Dissenting com- 
 munions in this respect excel it. As a national institution, 
 however, the Church has been affected by the political changes 
 of the last generation, and no sketch of this period would be 
 complete which did not notice some of those which have 
 modified and even altered its relation to the country at large. 
 
 A Commission of Inquiry into the working of the Poor-law 
 system, appointed long before the Secession, reported in 1844; 
 and in 1845, an Act, based upon the report, was passed, super- 
 seding the old system of relief of the poor by voluntary assess- 
 ment of heritors and offerings of congregations. It is a fashion 
 with some people to decry this statute as one of the most 
 revolutionary of the century, as communistic in its principles, 
 and demoralising in its effects. But such people evidently 
 forget that no human agency for the amelioration of the con- 
 
The Church from 1843 to 1881. 341 
 
 dition of the poor is perfect, and that the best will contain in 
 themselves, or develop in their working, tendencies of a more 
 or less deteriorating kind, against which we must guard as best 
 we can. They also labour under the common fallacy that the 
 Act created the evils which it only brought to light. It was 
 rendered necessary by the utter break-down of a system, which, 
 though excellent in theory, and successful in certain given 
 circumstances, had proved palpably inadequate to the wants 
 of the age. The chief lesson to be gained from it is the 
 illustration which it affords of the utter failure of the voluntary 
 principle to provide for a want of national m^agnitude. If ever 
 there was a sphere in which that principle was likely to succeed, 
 it was furnished by the care of the poor. And yet, just as 
 Chalmers predicted, its own keenest advocates were the loudest 
 in demanding that the poor should be rescued from dependence 
 upon its caprice. 
 
 The abolition of University Tests was another measure 
 affecting the Church, To secure Presbyterianism against Epis- 
 copalian conspiracies, it was enacted in 1690, and again in 
 1707, that no professor should be admitted to a Scottish chair 
 without first subscribing the Confession of Faith, and promising 
 to adhere to the worship and discipline of the Church. Legis- 
 lation demanded solely by the exigencies of the time very pro- 
 perly fell into abeyance as the danger ceased. In Edinburgh, 
 during the most of the last century, tests were not applied, and 
 since the Leslie controversy, had only been applied in the case 
 of the theological chairs. At the time when the agitation was 
 culminating, it was discovered that more than a fourth of the 
 professors of Scotland were serving without having signed, and 
 that many of the most distinguished among them were members 
 of the very Episcopalian Church which the tests were meant to 
 exclude. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that after 
 the failure of several Bills in Parliament, the election of a Free 
 Church Professor to the Chair of Moral Philosophy by the 
 Edinburgh Town Council should have brought matters to a 
 
342 Sf Gi/es' Lectures. 
 
 crisis. In the litigation which ensued, it was decided that it 
 was the duty of the Senatus to comply with the terms of the 
 statute ; but it was not clear how that should be a duty which 
 had been religiously disregarded for more than a hundred years. 
 Moreover, none but the most extreme men could defend a test 
 which admitted those whom it was meant to exclude, and which 
 could be used to exclude those whom its framers would have 
 admitted. It was now an agitation not without, but within the 
 Church. Prominent Churchmen had been in the movement for 
 years. In the interests both of the Church and of education, it 
 was imperative that reasonable concessions should be made ; 
 and even ardent defenders of the Church were glad when the 
 Act of 1853 swept away a 'crumbling bulwark, which had 
 become more a danger than a defence.' 
 
 By far the most important change in the Church's relation to 
 the institutions of the country was effected in the matter of 
 education. During the stormy years of 1842-43, negotiations 
 with the Privy Council issued in the promise of aid for 
 Normal schools, and in the establishment of that co-operation 
 of the government and the Church, which has so materially 
 influenced the common school instruction of the people. The 
 Secession, which followed shortly after, proved in regard 
 to education a gain to the country. For once at least 
 division was stronger than union. The efforts made by 
 the Free Church to establish an educational system, produced 
 in a very few years close upon six hundred schools, and 
 stimulated the Church to a rivalry which was eventually 
 to lose much of its bitterness in a field which was large 
 enough for all. 
 
 The policy of the government followed closely that of the 
 Church previous to this period. It was to ascertain and make 
 known throughout the country the state of education, in the 
 hope that voluntary eftbrt for its improvement would follow. 
 The ecclesiastical divisions of Scotland presented conditions 
 very favourable to the prosecution of such a policy, and, accord- 
 
77/1? Church fro7n 1843 ^^ 1881. 343 
 
 ingly, the system of government grants in aid of denominational 
 schools was inaugurated in 1847. It was a bold, and manifest, 
 and eminently successful attempt at concurrent religious endow- 
 ment. It was eagerly accepted by the Roman Catholics and Epis- 
 copalians, and though a considerable number of ministers and 
 others demurred for a time, both Established and Free Churches, 
 by large majorities, accepted a system which, recognising the 
 necessity for religious instruction, dispensed its grants indis- 
 criminately to schools, whatever might be the religion taught in 
 them. 
 
 By-and-by this mode of assistance gave way to capitation 
 grants, grounded in and measured by the ascertained progress 
 of the pupils. The minute promulgating the change earnestly 
 engaged the attention of all the churches. Our own General 
 Assembly, led by Dr Cook, while approving of its object, was 
 opposed to nearly all its details. Some two years after, how- 
 ever, he was able to report that most of the defects in the 
 Code originally proposed had been removed. The results 
 of its first trial in 1863 amply proved the necessity for some 
 more stringent test of educational work than had hitherto 
 been applied, and whatever dispute may continue as to the 
 merits or demerits of the system, its leading principle has been 
 thoroughly vindicated by the logic of events. 
 
 The interest evoked in education by the working of the 
 Privy Council system tended to further an agitation for proper 
 legislation on the subject. The Act of 1861, making better 
 provision for teachers of parochial schools, and freeing them 
 from the test of connection with the Church, helped greatly to 
 foster this movement. During the ten years that followed, 
 several measures were tried ; a Royal Commission had been 
 instituted and had reported, but even a Bill framed according 
 to its suggestions proved abortive. Some of these measures, 
 condemned at the time as revolutionary, may be found to be 
 much more moderate in their provisions than what is now uni- 
 versally accepted ; but though they failed to become law, they 
 
344 S^ dies' Lectures, 
 
 served in maturing public opinion and preparing the way for 
 the Act of 1872. The agitation connected with the passing of 
 this measure is too recent to permit of detailed account. The 
 action of the Church, however, in reference to it, is easily stated. 
 Recognising many excellent provisions in it, it objected to the 
 entire absence of recognition of the importance and necessity of 
 religious instruction. The author of the Bill maintained that it 
 would neither prescribe nor proscribe religious instruction, but 
 leave the people free to have religious instruction if they 
 desired it. As originally drawn, however, this freedom was 
 very materially proscribed. Nevertheless, it was welcomed by 
 the Voluntaries, and by a majority of the Free Church. 
 The latter were prepared to surrender the obligation of the 
 State to provide religious instruction ; the former, by strange 
 inconsistency, were willing to allow Local Boards to infringe 
 their principle of religious equality. The minority of the 
 Free Church, however, were not prepared to abandon their 
 principles, just to make matters smooth with the promoters 
 of the measure. Cordially joining the Church in an endea- 
 vour to remedy so grave a defect, they succeeded in carrying 
 amendments recognising the value of religious instruction, 
 and giving liberty to the people of Scotland to provide in 
 all their schools the invariable custom of ages. 
 
 The effect of the Act has severed the direct connection of 
 the Church with national education. In 1872, 2400 schools 
 were reported to be connected with the Church. Of these, 1150 
 were parochial and parliamentary schools, and 1250 owed their 
 connection to the voluntary exertions of its Committee, its 
 kirk-sessions, its members. So, though here again the volun- 
 tary principle failed completely to supply a national want 
 — the exertions of all other denominations put together having 
 originated fewer than 900 schools — the Church has no reason 
 to be ashamed of its contribution to the cause of national 
 education. The Normal schools still flourish, but of common 
 schools very few remain, and what remain will eventually be 
 
The CJnirch from 1843 ^^ 1881. 345 
 
 absorbed. But, as there is * that scattereth and yet increaseth,' 
 so if the Church be wise and tolerant, and keep clear of 
 outside sectarian complications, it will find that its influence 
 in the education of the people, because recognised to be 
 unselfish, is more powerful and beneficent than ever. 
 
 The watchword which has most influenced its action during 
 this period has been not the rights, but the efficiency of the 
 Church. The schemes recently developed for augmenting the 
 smaller livings, and for providing for aged and infirm ministers, 
 are notable indications of this. The first, though pressed upon 
 its attention by the great reduction in the stipends caused by 
 the repeal of the Corn Laws, and by the general advance in 
 social expenditure, is pleaded for solely on the ground that con- 
 gregations must suffer if served by a pauperised clergy. The 
 other, again, proceeds on the idea that congregations must be 
 vigorously served. Presbyterial supervision of ministers is not 
 indeed what it should be, yet public opinion is so maturing, 
 that indolence or inefficiency in the ministry will soon be as 
 little tolerated as open immorality. Even already it has put 
 an end to the times when it could be said that ' ministers only 
 find their office tolerable when they acquire facility in ignoring 
 its responsibihties,' or that Presbyteries are simply trades- 
 unions for protecting the interests of their members. The 
 increasing popularity of the Committee on Life and Work, 
 ostensibly instituted to stimulate activity, betokens a deepen- 
 ing regard to the great interests intrusted to us, and speaks 
 volumes for the hold which the conviction has now gained, 
 that the only right worth fighting for is simply freedom to dis- 
 charge all our duty. 
 
 Prominent among our modern activities is the care of the 
 young. Up till 1843, very little progress was made within the 
 Church in the development of Sabbath-schools. It was only in 
 1 84 1 that a return in regard to them was asked for. In 1850, 
 the General Assembly formally assumed their oversight, and 
 since then annual reports record, that while in 1850, there were 
 
346 -5/ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 only 76,232 children on our rolls, in 1880, 230,353 of the 
 youth of the country availed themselves of the religious instruc- 
 tion provided in the Sabbath-schools of the Church. The 
 proper accommodation and organisation of those schools, now 
 yearly engaging greater attention, shew plainly that the system 
 is rapidly passing into another and higher phase, which will 
 erelong shew marked results. 
 
 The Prayer and Fellowship Meetings, the Mutual Improve- 
 ment, Temperance, and Total Abstinence Societies, the Asso- 
 ciations for providing popular lectures and suitable recreation 
 for the people, which are now considered essential to the 
 economy of a well-served parish, manifest that the pastors 
 of 1880 bear a much heavier burden than was borne by their 
 predecessors of former generations. Indeed there is a danger 
 that the many and severe demands upon the ' modern minister ' 
 may operate injuriously against his mental culture. The 'learned 
 leisure ' of former times would be difficult now to find. Leisure 
 certainly there is not ; and though in the parishes of Scot- 
 land there is abundance of men of scholarly sympathies, there 
 is a danger of learning diminishing. Yet learning is simply 
 essential, now that literature is immensely more diffused. 
 It is to be feared the modern Church is not sufficiently 
 alive to the danger. The institution of the Croall and the 
 Baird lectures, and the lectures delivered annually in the four 
 universities by men appointed by the General Assembly, are no 
 doubt steps in the right direction. Even a course of lectures 
 like the present may serve to stimulate study, but a far more 
 extensive and systematic and sustained effiDrt is necessary in 
 order to secure that the clergy of the present and future may be 
 worthy successors of those who in earlier times adorned the 
 venerable brows of the Church with laurels won in every 
 department of literature and science and art. 
 
 A fiercer light is beating upon the Church of to-day, and 
 stronger forces than influenced preceding generations have to 
 be dealt with and adjusted. The age of Queen Victoria is very 
 
The Church from 1843 ^^ 1881. 347 
 
 unlike that of the Georges, Railways and telegraphs drawing 
 together the very ends of the earth, facilitating rapid exchange 
 of thought, have produced a silent but most mighty revolution. 
 It is an age marked by intense movement in every domain of 
 human activity; by exploration and colonisation of whole 
 continents ; by startling discoveries in science ; by great 
 inventions in the arts. If the effect produced by the revival 
 of letters and the rise of industry in Europe centuries ago 
 was to close the middle ages, and bring about the Reforma- 
 tion, then unquestionably this fusion of east and west, 
 and north and south in the great seething present, must 
 result in even a grander renaissance, which must powerfully 
 influence the Church. There have been ages in which the 
 clergy were the sole teachers of the world. In the present 
 age, the gifts of the Church, whether of science, or prophecy, 
 or healing, appear more in the membership than in the 
 ministry. The reputed teachers of the people have in many 
 things to assume the attitude of learners toward those who 
 look to them for spiritual counsel. The modern pulpit is 
 not so much marked by originality as by appreciation. If 
 not radiating forth new light, it is quick to catch and reflect 
 it. The religious thought and feeling of the people are not 
 ahead of the pulpit; yea, it is through its ministration 
 that the people in most instances receive what is good 
 in the spirit of the age. The sermon of to-day undoubtedly 
 lacks the polished diction and classic grace of the best 
 specimens of Moderatism, just as the average preacher will 
 not compare in scholarship and culture with the best of those 
 stately and courtly fathers, who, lingering far into our period, 
 have now all fallen asleep. But the pulpit of to-day, with all 
 its defects, is more in accordance with the wants of the 
 people. Were they offered again the clearly reasoned theo- 
 logical or moral essays of a former age, they would unquestion- 
 ably turn from them, to the living and often rudely expressed 
 sertno which stammers under the weight of its responsibilities, 
 
348 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 as it grapples with the sins, and sorrows, and trials of a most 
 complex daily life. 
 
 An age, characterised by a science and literature and art 
 which are all its own, will, as a consequence, be marked by a 
 theology peculiar to it. When the forces are more analytic than 
 synthetic, candid minds will never dogmatise. The ablest 
 judges hesitate to decide how far the progress of scientific 
 research, the revival of grammatical learning, the vast dis- 
 coveries of the scriptures of long-buried religions, have 
 modified, or are likely to modify, our thinking in the grandest 
 of all themes. Most of us, however, will gladly own that 
 while theology is no less divine than it was, it is now immensely 
 more human. It is no longer prosecuted in order to find 
 defences for an existing system, but scientifically, out of 
 reverence to God and devotion to truth alone. A research 
 which is reverent may well be inexorable, for whatever havoc 
 it may make of opinion, it can never damage, but only confirm, 
 the Faith. It is to the credit of the Church that in such an 
 age it has maintained an attitude wisely tolerant toward 
 those religious difficulties which must exercise all living 
 minds. It has never owned the necessity of producing 
 from its armoury the terrible instrument of libel for heresy, 
 and it has been rewarded, on the whole, by a very general 
 loyalty to its standards. Here and there, indeed, its tolerance 
 has been strained and even abused. Yet, as no one would 
 think of bringing down the whole weight and majesty of law 
 on some foolish boy who, bewitched by the false glory of 
 Jack Sheppard, aspires to play the role of highwayman, so 
 no one thinks of libelling for heresy persons who plainly are 
 ignorant of the real meaning of the word. Their off"ences are 
 often only the excrescences of unformed intellects, which we 
 may expect of themselves to yield to fuller knowledge and 
 maturer thought. In any case, the attempt to regulate rather 
 than repress movements whose origin is beyond our control, 
 will prove the truest wisdom in the end. 
 
The Church from 1843 /(? 1881. 349 
 
 One of the weak points of the Presbyterian Church is its 
 worship, though the reasons of this have not sufficiently been 
 taken into account. Never at any time very rich in ecclesi- 
 astical structures, Scotland, toward the close of the seventeenth 
 century, found her heritage wasted ; not so much by the 
 fanaticism of reformers as by the ravages of Southern armies 
 and the evil fortune of several generations of civil war and 
 confusion. The land was too impoverished to repair what 
 the wealth of the old Church reared; and so many a valuable 
 relic was allowed to crumble into decay. For many years after 
 its establishment, the Church was confronted in many parishes 
 by heritors hostile to its polity, and had to be content 
 with such structures as their parsimony permitted them to 
 provide. Then the reHgious feeling of last century was too 
 weak to be concerned about the matter. Men went about the 
 building of a church as they did about the building of a barn, 
 and did not scruple to use as their quarry the beautiful ecclesi- 
 astical relics they possessed. It is a startling fact that the age 
 which produced such structures as still disfigure too many of 
 our towns and parishes, was precisely one that felt no obligation 
 to preach the Gospel to the heathen. The men who could 
 take the stones worn by the devotion of former generations, to 
 build a pen for their oxen or their swine, were just the very 
 men who could condone bribery in a judge, and drunkenness in 
 a minister. 
 
 It was not the revival of taste or culture, but the revival of 
 religion, that awoke and fostered that reforming spirit which 
 now strives to undo the ravages of a former time, by replacing 
 the miserable buildings which blot many a landscape with 
 churches worthy of their object, and by restoring in the grand 
 structures that survive, the old sublimity to the arched roof, 
 and the old grace to the traceried window. While we venerate 
 our old cathedrals and parish churches as affecting memorials 
 of our country's past, we do well to prize them even more for 
 their association with our religion ; and we are simply doing our 
 
35© Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 duty in dedicating to their restoration something of our wealth, 
 as a thank-offering for the privileges of which they perpetually 
 remind us that we are still the heirs. 
 
 Improvement in the services of the house of God went hand 
 in hand with this attempt to improve its structure. One looks 
 back with amazement to the system which generally prevailed 
 scarcely thirty years ago. Worship there could hardly be in a 
 system which lacked its prominent elements. Liturgical it cer- 
 tainly was, but after the worst of types. In some churches, the 
 opening and closing prayers never varied from year to year; 
 psalms and tunes came round with the same unvarying 
 regularity ; the Lord's Prayer was seldom heard. In many 
 others there was no reading of Scripture. So thoroughly had 
 the injunction of 1812 fallen into disuse, that in 1856 the 
 Assembly had to ordain the reading of a portion of the Old and 
 New Testament in every diet of worship. 
 
 It has been my endeavour, in sketching this picture, to avoid 
 as far as possible all reference to persons; but it is impossible 
 to avoid alluding to one whose name, though recalling keen and 
 bitter controversy, now awakens only kindly memories in all who 
 knew him. What share he had in furthering this reform in our 
 Scottish worship — how far he helped, how far he hindered it — 
 may be questions between parties yet. But no one can ques- 
 tion Dr Lee's enthusiastic prosecution of it for the sake and in 
 the interest of the Church. In a matter like this, I chronicle 
 rather than criticise; but the introduction of instrumental music 
 into the service is undoubtedly due to his contendings. Other 
 changes might have come without his advocacy, but it was cer- 
 tainly through his pleadings that the organ, that ' holy Nazarite 
 that will not go to the dance or to the battle,' has been per- 
 mitted again to enter the house of the Lord. 
 
 That the whole Church sympathised in the reform of public 
 worship, even when opposing Dr Lee's method of prosecuting 
 it, is proved by its united action. As early as 1852, it began to 
 consider what was necessary for the improvement of praise. 
 
The CJmrch from 1843 to 1881. 351 
 
 Though in 1859 the reading of prayers from a book was 
 condemned, a committee appointed before was continued, to 
 prepare forms of worship for the use of soldiers and sailors and 
 colonists. The Aids to Devotion, the Hymnal, the Psalter, 
 and the Psalmody publications ; the forms of address respecting 
 baptismal professions and obligations, transmitted in 1871 to 
 every minister of the Church, are the fruits of this action. 
 Further progress in this reform depends upon the moderation 
 of those most anxiously interested in it. There is nothing in 
 its constitution to prevent the Church — free as it is to use 
 for edification the spiritual treasures of Christendom — from 
 yet formulating for the Scottish people their own Book of 
 Common Order. But I am persuaded that if that does 
 appear, it will be permissive rather than compulsory. In 
 poverty and long tribulation, it has learned the value of 
 free prayer. The danger of having no liturgy may be to 
 sever it from the wisdom and piety of the past ; but the 
 having one may involve the greater peril of severance from 
 that living fount of inspiration which alone can make it 
 the Church of the Present and the Future. 
 
 The enormous increase in the power of the press, which now 
 penetrates for good or evil into every family in the kingdom, 
 is at last coming to be appreciated by the Church. At no 
 time has it encouraged publications professing authoritatively 
 to defend its interests, wisely judging that all such tend 
 only to foster narrowness and excite hostility, and are really 
 unnecessary in a community whose only policy is industry. 
 In i860, however. Good Words may be said to have revolu- 
 tionised popular religious literature. At first fiercely opposed 
 on account of its very catholicity, it soon came to be earnestly 
 imitated even by those who denounced it ; and now among 
 the many periodicals which seek to educate or amuse the 
 world. Life and Work, flying the pennon of the Church, holds 
 bravely its way. Here again, however, the aim is neither 
 propagandist nor defensive, but solely to provide a wholesome 
 
35 2 -SV dies' Lectures. 
 
 popular literature at the cheapest possible rate, and to stimulate 
 Christian life in all manifold forms of activity. 
 
 In concluding this survey, I would touch very lightly upon 
 the spiritual life of the Church, for the truest and best 
 things of a Church are precisely those vi^hich no one can 
 tabulate. The system of results applied to education is said 
 to be injurious, as lowering both its quantity and quality. 
 Applied to the Church, it would simply be ruinous. The 
 life of a Church can never be measured by the amount of its 
 revenues or by the extent and variety of its activities. Where 
 there is life there will be activity; but there may be much 
 showy activity without life. The healthiest Church is the 
 most liberal and tolerant and humble : the severest in its 
 strictures on its own, the readiest to put the best construction 
 on the action of others. That our Church has shared in that 
 baptism of benevolence which stamps the present as one 
 of the most missionary and charitable of Christian centuries 
 no one can deny. The largest individual oftering ever made 
 in modern times to the cause of religion is recorded of it. 
 Unsolicited, and solely from a sense of indebtedness, Mr James 
 Baird, one of the shrewdest and kindliest of Scotchmen, crowned 
 many generous gifts by devoting in his lifetime half a million 
 of money to be spent in furthering its usefulness. The very 
 amount of his gift is significant of his faith in the Church. 
 That the people, are everywhere turning to it in increasing 
 numbers, proves that it accords with their national sentiment, 
 and satisfies their spiritual wants. Whatever may be charged 
 against it, it cannot be said to bear itself oppressively or 
 offensively toward any outsider. Its members have no advan- 
 tages which they are not prepared to share with others on 
 the same terms on which they enjoy them. So if the people 
 are wise, they will not permit the ark of God to be dragged 
 into the dust of party warfare, but will maintain it as a 
 common national shrine to which, after their keenest conflicts, 
 all parties can alike repair. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 FIRST SERIES— THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE PRESENT DAY : 
 
 HOW FAR AN OUTGROWTH FROM THE PAST, AND AN EXPRESSION 
 OF THE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND LIFE OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 By the Rev. James Macgregor, D.D., Senior Minister of St Cuthbert's 
 Parish, Edinburgh. 
 
 T N discharging the duty which has been imposed upon me, I 
 -*- have, in this concluding lecture, to review the ground 
 traversed by my predecessors ; to trace the historic links which 
 connect the existing Church of Scotland with the distant past ; 
 and to indicate its present position, aims, and prospects. 
 
 It is historically certain that a pure Christian faith reached the 
 Scottish shores some time before the close of the fourth century. 
 The same St Ninian who brought us the great gift, and who 
 built his Candida Casa, or White House, within the roar of the 
 racing Solway, seems to have been the first who carried it to 
 Ireland. It was a time when the Bishops of Rome, though 
 powerful, had not as yet attained to supreme jurisdiction, and 
 when the ministers of religion still claimed to derive their autho- 
 rity from Christ alone. It was the faith of the great Councils of 
 Nice and Constantinople; the faith of Jerome and Ambrose and 
 
 w 
 
354 'S^ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 Augustine. The isolation of the British Churches from com- 
 munion with those of Western Europe, consequent upon the with- 
 drawal of the Roman power from Britain in 410 a.d., tended to 
 preserve their pristine purity. In the hundred and fifty years 
 that followed, it is faintest twilight, the movements uncertain, 
 the forms shadowy and dim. The twilight broadens into dawn 
 on the arrival of Columba with his twelve disciples at lona in 
 563, the greatest character and the greatest event in the history 
 of the Scottish Church next to Knox and the Reformation. 
 Thanks to the industry of his successor and biographer 
 Adamnan, that great figure stands out, in sharp relief against 
 the darkness that preceded and followed, in a light almost 
 modern in its clearness ; and we can see distinctly, what kind of 
 man he was, what he thought, believed, and taught, and how he 
 lived and wrought and died. To all time he will be known 
 as the great apostle of Scottish Christianity, and his lonely, 
 beautiful, and soft-aired lona as its mother-shrine. We have 
 one strong link which binds the early Celtic Church which he 
 founded with the Church of our modern day, in the fact attested 
 by Columbanus, that 'he received nought but the doctrine of 
 the evangelists and apostles ; ' and in the evidence of Adamnan, 
 that ' the foundation of Columba's preaching, and his great 
 instrument in the conversion of the heathen, was the Word of 
 God.' No fact could be more significant or prophetic. It 
 was the pure and unadulterated religion of Jesus that was 
 first offered to our forefathers, and that first broke in upon the 
 gloom of our ancient forests. The first strong foundations of 
 the Scottish Church were laid broad and deep, where they rest 
 to-day, on the solid rock of Scripture. It was with this book 
 in their hands that Columba fought and won the battle with 
 Paganism ; Knox, the battle with Popery ; Melville, the first 
 battle of Presbytery with Episcopacy — the three great struggles 
 which shaped the form and determined the fortunes of the 
 Scottish Church. It has been the living contact of the Scottish 
 mind with its life-giving words which more than all other forces 
 
The Church of the Present Day. 355 
 
 put together have made this country what it is. With the 
 exception of the Roman CathoHc period, this note runs all 
 through the history of the Scottish Church. 
 
 From the coming of Columba there is light for one hundred 
 and fifty years, and we know with considerable certainty what 
 is going on. It radiates from lona and spreads over the greater 
 part of Scotland north of the Forth and Clyde. Then comes a 
 long, dark, and much-confused period of four hundred years. 
 One fact stands clear out to the student of that misty time, that 
 from the days of Columba to the death of Malcolm Canmore, 
 Scotland had a National Church peculiarly her own, which 
 was neither Roman Catholic nor Episcopalian nor Presby- 
 terian, and whose direct paternity it is folly for any Christian 
 Church of this day to claim. When the light died out with 
 Adamnan in 704, it was monastic, not parochial nor diocesan^ 
 when the light came in with Saxon Margaret and her sons, it 
 was monastic still. All through, it was tribal, not territorial \ it 
 was Celtic, not Roman. Its rulers were abbots, to whom the 
 bishops were often subject. Its clergy were not always celibate. 
 They owned no subjection to Rome ; and they bore no resem- 
 blance to either the secular or the regular clergy of the Western 
 Church. We can also see through those dim years that 
 this Celtic Church has been made familiar with suffering; 
 that its clergy have tasted the bitterness of exile ; that it has 
 lost its churches and been stripped of its property. We find 
 traces, too, of that independent spirit — that passionate love of 
 freedom, that jealousy of foreign interference and dictation, 
 that capacity of suffering for what they believed to be right — 
 which a little later were to be tried and tempered in the 
 long war with England, and which have come down to us as 
 one of our richest inheritances from those ancient times. 
 
 In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, owing to decay from 
 within and to English influence from without, there came a 
 slow and silent, but important revolution. The monastic 
 system was giving place to the diocesan, and over the whole 
 
356 Sf Giles' Lectures. 
 
 of the LoAvlands of Scotland, the Celtic to the Saxon tongue. 
 The year in which King Malcolm, the saintly Margaret, and 
 Fothad, the last native Bishop of Alban, died — 1093 — may be 
 said to date the passing away of the Celtic Church. With the 
 establishment of the Benedictines in lona in 1203, the Roman 
 rule became universal in Scotland. In 1286, the stumble of 
 a horse on the crags of Kinghorn completed the process, by 
 bringing to an end the ancient dynasty of our Celtic kings. 
 
 Of the great revolution which then took place, two results 
 have lived on to our day, and distinctly connect the living 
 present with the distant past. Few things in this world of 
 change have vitality enough to carry them over a period of 
 seven hundred years. There are at least two parts of the 
 present Church system of Scotland which go back without 
 a break through that long period of time. The one is our 
 elastic territorial and parochial system, capable of readjustment 
 to the varying needs of the population. No better system 
 ever was or ever will be devised for securing the spiritual 
 supervision of a country, and the whole body of its people. 
 The other is the provision for religious ordinances by the prin- 
 ciple of tithe or teind, which was originally the voluntary assign- 
 ment, not by the State, but by the great lords who owned the 
 soil, of the tenth part of the produce of the parish for the 
 supply of its religious wants; and which thus became the 
 property of the Church by an indefeasible title. So ancient 
 is this system of tithe, that Blackstone emphatically declares 
 that no beginning can be found for it. According to Bede, 
 there w^as as early as the seventh century a ' kirk sest,' which 
 very probably resembled tithes. In Scotland, there belonged 
 to the Church, besides the teinds, extensive property in land, 
 which had also been the voluntary gift of the great land- 
 owners, and which continued to belong to the Church, first in 
 its Celtic, and then in its Roman form, down to the Reforma- 
 tion. In 1587, by what can only be described as a great act 
 of spoliation, this property passed to the crown, and through it 
 
The Church of the Prese?it Day. 357 
 
 became the possession, in too many instances, of worthless 
 nobles. The teinds were not seriously touched, and as 
 rearranged by Charles I. in 1633, still continue as a national 
 provision for religious ordinances. The entire yearly income of 
 the rightful property of the Church from the ancient endow- 
 ments would amount at the present value to an enormous 
 sum. What has escaped spoliation amounts to only ;^2 75,ooo, 
 which is less than the income of many single noblemen. 
 How many properties in this land are held to-day by so long 
 and so strong a tenure, as the fragment that still remains of 
 that ancient provision for the spiritual wants of the people, and 
 especially of the poor of Scotland ; and of what properties can 
 it be said that they have been so faithfully and so consistently 
 employed for the public good ? Should the nation ever resolve 
 to reconsider the purposes to which this property is applied, it 
 would be an interesting inquiry to try to ascertain what became 
 of those vast landed estates which, unbought by money or by 
 service, passed from public into private hands, what national 
 interests they have subserved, and whether any portion of them 
 might not still be recovered for national purposes. 
 
 Beyond the institution of parishes and of parochial endow- 
 ments ; the effect on the national character of the long and 
 bitter war of independence ; and the scattered remains of the 
 great ecclesiastical edifices, no existing link connects the four 
 hundred years of papal domination with the Church of the 
 present day. It was a period which, not without promise 
 at its commencement, darkened deeply towards its close. 
 The Romish Church was everywhere growing more degraded 
 and corrupt, at the very time when, through the revival 
 of letters, a new light and a new life were dawning on the 
 world. There are probably two main reasons why, when the 
 work of Reformation came, it was more thoroughly effected 
 in Scotland than in any other country of Europe; because 
 nowhere had Romanism attained to a condition of more 
 unmitigated vileness, and because nowhere was the work of 
 
35^ '5'/ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 cleansing more thoroughly the work of the people, and a 
 people, too, whose habit has ever been to do with their might 
 what their hand findeth to do. 
 
 The form which the Scottish Church took amid the throes 
 of the Reformation, and which it will probably always main- 
 tain, was due to the two greatest and most fruitful facts to 
 be found in the whole range of its history — that the battle 
 of Protestantism was fought by the people, and that the 
 principal weapon used in the conflict was, as we have seen, the 
 Word of God. The result was a Church essentially popular 
 and Scriptural, which recognised in the education and intelli- 
 gence of the people the best ally of religion, which was built in 
 the main upon a Presbyterian basis, and which (17th August 
 1560) was established by law. 
 
 From the Reformation till the Revolution, a period of one 
 hundred and thirty years, the spectacle which our country 
 presents is that of a people at war with their rulers for their 
 religious rights. During five successive reigns, from Mary to 
 James VIL, every ruler who sat upon the throne did his very 
 utmost to thrust his religious views upon the people, with the 
 invariable result of leaving the victory with them. The war of 
 Protestantism with Popery had scarcely ended when the war of 
 Presbytery with Prelacy began (at the Concordat of Leith on 
 Feb. I, 1572), and raged with ever- varying fortunes through one 
 hundred and eighteen troubled and turbulent years, till in June 
 1690 it ended in the victory of Presbytery as the permanent 
 and legal form of Church government. Since the war of inde- 
 pendence, no struggle so protracted, so fierce, so bloody, has 
 been waged by the Scottish people. The war of independence 
 began with the passing away of the Celtic Dynasty and the 
 establishment of the House of Stuart. The religious war ended 
 in their expulsion from the throne. The inborn love of 
 freedom was the motive cause of both, and both have left 
 their ineffaceable marks on the character of the Scottish 
 people. 
 
TJie Church of the Present Day. 359 
 
 So far as the legal establishment of the opposing systems 
 went, the attitude of affairs was this : 
 
 Presbytery. Episcopacy. 
 
 Aug. 17, 1560 — Feb. I, 1572. Feb. I, 1572 — June 1592. 
 
 June 1592 — Oct. 1612. Oct. 1612 — ^June 1640. 
 
 June 1640 — May 1661. May 1661 — ^June 1690. 
 
 Of these one hundred and thirty years, Presbytery was the 
 legal system at three different periods, covering, in round 
 numbers, fifty-two years ; Episcopacy was the legal system at 
 three different periods, covering in round numbers seventy- 
 eight years. But the periods of possession are no indica- 
 tion of the relative hold of the systems upon the minds of 
 the people generally. In every instance, Episcopacy was 
 violently imposed by the sovereign, and was overthrown by 
 the people. It thus became in their minds the symbol of 
 despotism. There can be no doubt that all through, the 
 feelings and convictions of the mass of the people, except 
 in the North, were on the side of Presbytery. In not 
 one of the many ups and downs of that period of strife 
 was Presbytery overthrown and Episcopacy imposed by the 
 people's will. ' The rational inference ' which Macaulay draws 
 from the facts of the case is this, that at the Revolution 
 ' more than nineteen-twentieths of those Scotchmen whose 
 consciences were interested in the matter were Presbyterians, 
 and that not one Scotchman in twenty was decidedly and on 
 conviction an Episcopalian.' 
 
 It was not Episcopacy in itself which they resisted, so 
 much as the royal and priestly despotism of which it was the 
 symbol. It was the gross Erastianism, servility, and tyranny 
 with which it was associated, which made it an abomina- 
 tion to the Scottish people. Such is the calm verdict of 
 impartial history. 
 
 Another fact must be borne in mind. At none of the periods 
 during which the system was established was it Episcopacy 
 
360 St cues' Lectures. 
 
 pure and simple. It was Episcopacy overlying a Presbyterian 
 ground-work. The Kirk-session and the Presbytery lived on 
 through the whole period of strife. In matters of creed, worship, 
 and discipline, there was very little difference between the rival 
 systems. Of the two collegiate ministers of the Tron Kirk, 
 Edinburgh, in 1692, one was Episcopalian and the other Presby- 
 terian. There were rival kirk-sessions as well as rival ministers, 
 and the service was conducted at the different diets according 
 to the different forms. Beyond the institution of Bishops, the 
 present Anghcanised Episcopal Church in Scotland bears little 
 resemblance to that which fought so hard a battle with Presby- 
 tery in the seventeenth century, and lost. 
 
 At the Revolution Settlement in 1690, it was finally deter- 
 mined that Presbytery was to be the future and permanent 
 form of the Scottish Reformed Church, and that there was not 
 to be a union of the two National Churches, even with the 
 union of the two kingdoms; and the first chapter of its history 
 came to an end. 
 
 Was it a gain or was it a loss that the struggle ended as it 
 did ? That question has been asked before. Of the influence 
 which the issue had, not merely upon Scotland, but upon the 
 United Kingdom, the verdict of one who, though himself a 
 Scotchman, and a grandson of the manse, had certainly no 
 prejudice in favour of his native Church or land, may be taken 
 as probably not very far from the truth. ' There can be no 
 doubt,' says Macaulay, 'that a religious union (between 
 Scotland and England in 1689) would have been one of the 
 greatest calamities that could have befallen either kingdom. 
 The union accomplished in 1707 has indeed been a great 
 blessing to both England and Scotland. But it has been a 
 blessing, because, in constituting one State, it left two Churches. 
 .... Had there been an amalgamation of the hierarchies, there 
 never would have been an amalgamation of the nations. . . . 
 Those marvellous improvements which have changed the face 
 of Scotland would never have been effected. Plains now rich 
 
The Church of the Present Day. 361 
 
 with harvests would have remained barren moors. . . . New 
 Lanark would still have been a sheep-walk, and Greenock a 
 fishing-village. What little strength Scotland could, under such 
 a system, have possessed must, in an estimate of the resources 
 of Great Britain, have not been added, but deducted. So 
 encumbered, our country never could have held, either in peace 
 or in war, a place in the first rank of nations.'-^ 
 
 Can as high an estimate be formed of the value of the 
 Presbyterian victory as regards the Church ? In answer to 
 that question, we must see what that form of Church govern- 
 ment was which then became the permanent polity. 
 
 'Three elements exist in the Presbyterian system — the 
 authority of presbyters, more especially as subordinate to 
 no office-bearer of higher rank in the Church ; the representa- 
 tion of the Laity in its government; and the provision made 
 for its external unity in courts of review.' The reason Avhy 
 not the Church of Scotland merely, but all the Churches of 
 the Reformation, had naturally the tendency to assume the 
 Presbyterian form, and did so wherever they were not 
 thwarted, as in England, by external circumstances, was simply 
 this — that while breaking with the immediate, the Reformers 
 went back to the remoter and purer past, and drew their 
 system from the fountain-head of Holy Scripture. Like 
 the primitive Apostolic Church on which it was modelled, 
 the Presbyterian Church recognises but two permanent oftices, 
 that of presbyters or elders, and that of deacons — the one 
 for things spiritual, the other for things temporal ; its basis, 
 unit, and type being the congregation, with its court of 
 associated elders called the kirk-session. Like it, it regards 
 the Christian people as the only Christian Church and the 
 only Christian priests. Like it, it unites the congregations 
 of a locality for purposes of government into a higher 
 court called the Presbytery, which consists of a clerical and 
 
 ^ History of Engtand, vol. iii., p. 257. 
 
362 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 lay representative from each kirk-session. Each member of 
 the Presbytery is also a member of a higher court representing 
 a province, and known as the Provincial Synod. The highest 
 court of all is the General Assembly, which is composed of 
 representatives or commissioners, both lay and clerical, 
 appointed by the various Presbyteries, and also of repre- 
 sentatives from the royal burghs and universities. Each of 
 these courts in the National Church has its jurisdiction, 
 status, and functions secured by the law of the land. From 
 the decisions of the Supreme Court on matters within its 
 own province, there is no appeal. The Church is thus 
 a perfect organic whole ; its every separate congregation 
 being not only an integral part, but a fully equipped 
 type or model of the whole Church. There is thus also 
 a simple and orderly gradation in the system of govern- 
 ment, one court rising above another, from that which repre- 
 sents a single congregation to that which represents the 
 whole Church, and each and all of them containing that large 
 infusion of the lay element which prevents the governing 
 power from being wielded by a class ; and by its practical 
 wisdom, its knowledge of affairs, its variety of status, intellect, 
 and character, constitutes the beauty, the stability, and the 
 freedom of the National Church of Scotland — a Church which 
 is thus in perfect harmony at once with Apostolic practice and 
 with the representative institutions of modern times. What 
 has been declared to be the great want of the Church of 
 England is admirably supplied by the General Assembly — 
 namely, ' a continuously acting organ by which to adjust itself 
 to the needs which changing times must bring upon every living 
 and working society of men.' For capacity of self-extension, 
 self-adjustment, and self-government, for adaptation to widely 
 different circumstances and conditions, for elasticity and 
 catholicity, no system could be more admirable. As a 
 consequence, it is found in somewhat different forms among 
 many different peoples and in widely distant lands. If we 
 
The Church of the Present Day. 363 
 
 leave out the Lutherans of Germany and elsewhere, who are 
 not Prelatical nor even Episcopal, in the sense attached to 
 that word by the Anglican Church, the Presbyterians of the 
 world outnumber the Protestant Episcopalians. ' Of all 
 organisations in the Christian Church,' says Dr Hill Burton, 
 ' Presbytery is, next to the Romish Hierarchy, the most 
 powerful. In places entirely isolated from external aid and 
 countenance, it is far more accomplished in organisation 
 than any other Church.' 
 
 There are two eminent advantages which flow from its 
 essentially popular character, and from the large lay element 
 in its government. It requires, and therefore fosters as an 
 essential element in its success, an all-pervading intelligence 
 in the community. In this respect, as in many others, it 
 was admirably suited to a country which could boast that it 
 was not only the best, but the only educated nation in the 
 world. Above all, it renders practically impossible the growth 
 of that sacerdotalism and superstition, whose only logical 
 resting-place is Rome, and which events have proved to 
 be the incurable taint and defect of Episcopacy, wherever it 
 has been held to be divinely authoritative to the exclusion of all 
 other systems of church government. When a Scotchman, 
 from whatever cause, breaks off from Presbyterianism in his 
 own land, he breaks off from the Church of Scottish history, 
 the Church to which we owe so much both of our civil and 
 religious light and freedom, and with whose fortunes and mis- 
 fortunes the brightest pages of the national annals have been 
 identified. 
 
 The system, so theoretically perfect, is not without grave 
 practical defects. There is a want of central control; a 
 want of the unity, concentration, and cohesiveness which 
 diocesan Episcopacy gives. The principle of equality errs by 
 excess. There is no natural initiative ; there is no firm and 
 responsible executive ; there is no permanent authority. While 
 the system is free from prelatic despotism, it is by no means 
 
3^4 ^^ Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 free from the danger of clerical and popular oppression. When 
 democracy becomes tyrannical, its tyranny is often of the worst 
 kind. 
 
 With the Revolution Settlement and the Treaty of Union, 
 a new chapter in the history of the Scottish Church began 
 which is not yet completed ; new , questions emerged which 
 are not yet answered. The fruitful and far-reaching influence 
 of a great national wrong was never more strikingly illustrated 
 than in the long train of miserable and not yet exhausted 
 consequences which followed the ill-omened Act of Queen 
 Anne, whereby, in 17 12, against the unanimous will of the 
 Church, Patronage was restored. A strong consensus of opinion 
 points to this Act, against which the Church continued to 
 protest for more than seventy years, as the principal root of 
 the troubles which followed. It would be difficult to find an 
 Act of Parliament against which so heavy a bill of indictment 
 can be brought. It directly led to the first secession in 1733, 
 which within fourteen years was itself split into two by the 
 Burghers' oath. It had a principal share in the formation 
 of the two great parties known as the Moderates and the 
 Populars, and their long and bitter contentions regarding the 
 presentation and the call. The harsh deposition of the gentle 
 Gillespie in 1752, and the consequent founding of the first 
 Relief Presbytery in 1761, were due to it. A wise voice in 
 1782 declared that this Act and the Church of Scotland 
 could not stand together. But for it, the Church would 
 never have been induced to go beyond her province, 
 and to exceed the rights secured to her by statute, by 
 passing the Chapel Act and the Veto Act of 1S34, and thus 
 to embark upon the most unwise and fatal conflict to be 
 found in the whole range of her history. In spite of the 
 great and honoured men who took part in it, and of the 
 splendid act of self-sacrifice to which it led, no conflict better 
 shews to how large an extent human frailty, passion, and 
 prejudice are factors in ecclesiastical history. No good man 
 
The Church of the Present Day. 365 
 
 can wish that his country should pass through such a time 
 again. 
 
 Had the bitter leaven which wrought so much mischief, and 
 which was purged out in 1874, been removed in 1834, the 
 story of the Disruption would never have been written. But 
 what was right in 1834 could not be wrong in 1874. When the 
 Church embraced a favourable opportunity presented to it, and 
 sought for its people the restoration of an ancient and much- 
 prized privilege, which had been violently wrested from it ; 
 when it obtained from Parliament the removal of an incubus 
 which Parliament had itself imposed, and which had weighed 
 it down for a hundred and sixty years ; when it sought to get 
 nearer the hearts of its alienated children by the removal of the 
 one great cause of their alienation — was that, in the eye of 
 everlasting righteousness, right or wrong ? Even granting that 
 the motive was the desire to lessen Dissent, to bring the 
 Churches closer together, and to hasten the day when our 
 broken Presbyterianism shall again be one, and when they who 
 now stand far apart shall see each other eye to eye — was that 
 a mean and ignoble motive? Is schism in itself a blessing ? 
 Is Dissent divine? Is the desire to remove the cause of 
 schism in itself a wrong ? True ! it might have been well for 
 all parties had the boon come earlier. But it is surely true of 
 blessings that they are better late than never. True, too, that 
 the evils which an Act of Parliament can do, another Act may 
 not wholly undo. The stream of tendency which has been set 
 aflowing can never perhaps be wholly dried up or rolled back 
 to its fountain-head. It is easy to divide ; it is not easy to unite. 
 But surely an unjust Act, pregnant with mischief, is better off 
 than on the statute-book. It is hard, no doubt, for the Free 
 Church to feel, ' If Patronage had been done away with in time, 
 there would have been no occasion to suffer as we have done.' 
 But it is not a high or noble or justifiable ground for even 
 a suffering Church to take with regard to another — ' because 
 we did not get a loaf of bread when we were hungry, we shall 
 
366 Sf Giles' Led tires. 
 
 take care that you do not get it either.' On no intelligible 
 ground can the abolition of Patronage be made, as it has 
 openly been, the occasion of an attack upon the National 
 Church, save on the principle that Dissenters have a vested 
 interest in the defects and abuses of the Establishment. A 
 more disingenuous or a more repulsive doctrine was never 
 fashioned in the brain of Christian men. 
 
 On no part of its long and chequered history may the Church 
 of Scotland look back with more unfeigned thankfulness to 
 Almighty God than on the period that has elapsed since 1843, 
 and during no period have there rested on its labours more 
 manifest tokens of the Divine blessing. ' In quietness and con- 
 fidence has been its strength.' Because ' peace has been within 
 its walls,' there has been ' prosperity within its palaces.' Itself 
 habitually maligned and traduced, its bitterest enemy cannot 
 charge it with having ever, even in the heat of the strife, 
 uttered a harsh word or done a harsh deed to those who left 
 its communion, and whose very nearness of relationship, as 
 so often happens, seems to have intensified their enmity. A 
 common danger past, drew its members closer together. A 
 meeker and more patient, a more temperate, tolerant, and 
 united spirit, was born of the sorrows of a troubled time. 
 Clearly recognising that its faithfulness to its great principle 
 and mission as a national Church is its one permanent title 
 to the nation's respect and confidence, it has done its very 
 best, through its Endowment and Home Mission Schemes, to 
 provide the ministrations of religion to every destitute locality 
 of the land. To this quiet and steadfast devotion to its national 
 duty, and to freedom from the curse of internal strife, is mainly 
 owing that astonishing success which has marked the Church 
 during recent years, and which unhappily, in the eyes of some, 
 is its most obnoxious feature and its worst offence. 
 
 By far the best evidence with regard to the numerical strength 
 of the difterent Churches would have been that ecclesiastical 
 column in the census returns which the two Established 
 
The Church of the Present Day. T)^'] 
 
 Churches have repeatedly sought, but which the Noncon- 
 formists have steadily and successfully resisted. We find, how- 
 ever, from their own returns that the communicants of the 
 Free Church are about 230,000, and those of the United Presby- 
 terian Church about 172,000; while from her own and parlia- 
 mentary returns, those of the Church of Scotland are about 
 500,000, or more than the other two put together. This 
 would give it 1,750,000 adherents at the ordinary reckoning, 
 or close upon a half of the entire population. It has 
 been shewn, too, that the increase of membership of the 
 Established Church is 8000 a year, or in eight years, 
 64,000 ; while in the Report of the Secretary of the Sus- 
 tentation Fund of the Free Church in December 1875 there 
 are these words : ' It may be assumed that our membership 
 should have shewn an increase over 1867 of 22,100. But it 
 is shewn above, on the basis of Presbyterial returns, that the 
 increase was only 7062. There is, therefore, a deficit of 
 15,000, or 7|- per cent' The Report of the United Presbyterian 
 Church presented to their Synod in 1877, declares: 'On the 
 whole, the United Presbyterian Church may have maintained, 
 but has not improved or strengthened, its position in relation 
 to the total population of the country.' In fifteen of the 
 Established churches in Edinburgh and Leith, the membership 
 in 1874 was 17,064, and in 1879 it was 19,485, an increase of 
 242 1 ; whereas in fifteen Free churches in Edinburgh and Leith, 
 occupying the same localities, and bearing the same names, the 
 numbers were 7430 in 1874, and 7761 in 1879, ^-n increase of 
 only 331. The proportion in these churches is therefore two 
 and a half to one in favour of the Established Church ; and her 
 increase in five years is more than seven times greater — and 
 this in a city supposed to be the stronghold of the Free Church. 
 In the same way, the increase in Sunday scholars in the Estab- 
 lished Church during twenty-six years ending 1877, exceeded 
 by 20,681 the increase of both the other denominations put 
 together. During the six years ending 1877, the free-will 
 
368 S^ G ties' Lectures. 
 
 offerings of the Established Church, including ^500,000 from 
 the late James Baird, amounted to ;^2, 43 1,779. ^^ this is a 
 sufficient answer to the common platform assertion that the 
 Established Church is ' moribund,' and confirms the statement 
 that ' it is yearly gaining in numbers, in influence for good, and 
 in the recognition of its merits by the general body of the 
 people.' There can be no doubt that where other things are 
 equal, the drift of the Scottish people is towards the Church of 
 their fathers. 
 
 But there are facts far more important than any figures, and 
 whose value no figures can estimate, underlying and explaining 
 these external marks of success. These facts are mainly these 
 — the Church's evangelical doctrine, spiritual earnestness, and 
 tolerant and comprehensive spirit. Such experience as has 
 been given me by a ministry of five-and-twenty years in 
 important centres of influence, is the ground and warrant of 
 my belief that through all these years there has been a gradual 
 deepening of the Church's spiritual life, and that it was never 
 more healthy than at the present day. Never was there more 
 of genuine piety, never more of personal love and loyalty to 
 the Lord Jesus, than there is now among its ministers and 
 people. Never was there a more faithful preaching in its 
 pulpits of the love of God in the redemption of the world 
 through Jesus Christ ; never a more faithful ministration of the 
 doctrines of grace throughout the length and the breadth of the 
 land. Never was its worship more comely and reverent, nor 
 its parochial system better manned and wrought, than it is at 
 the present day. Never were its clergy more alive to their duty, 
 more pure in life and doctrine, more abounding in zeal and 
 good works based upon a personal devotion to their great 
 Master. If there are exceptions, they are exceedingly rare ; and 
 at what period and in what Church have there not been such ? 
 
 Another marked and growing feature of the National Church 
 is its breadth and comprehensiveness. All through, it has 
 sought to maintain a friendly relation with other churches. 
 
The Church of the Present Day. 369 
 
 It is actuated by no narrow aims, and by no sectarian 
 jealousies ; its pulpits are open to ministers of all evangelical 
 denominations, and it welcomes to its communion and to a 
 share of its endowments any Presbyterian minister and con- 
 gregation who may care to take them. It embraces within 
 its membership a wider range of society, a more equal 
 balance of political parties, a richer intellectual life, and a 
 greater variety of religious type than any other Church. It is a 
 striking fact that no considerable secession ever took place from 
 its ranks on the ground of doctrine. With a folly of which it 
 has long since repented, it expelled two of the best men it ever 
 had, Edward Irving and John Macleod Campbell. With an 
 enviable nobility of soul, they both loved it to the last; and 
 Campbell died in its communion. It is of the very nature of a 
 national Church that it be politically, socially, religiously, as 
 broad and comprehensive as the national life which it represents; 
 not bound to one hard and fast line of Christian thought and 
 sentiment, but tolerating and comprehending all shades and 
 types of thought that are consistent with the great root doc- 
 trines of Christianity ; recognising, respecting, and fostering 
 whatever agencies and forces are at work for the general good, 
 whether within or without itself. A national Church is fulfilling 
 one of its very highest functions when it seeks to utilise and to 
 consecrate all the forces which are at work in the nation — its 
 wealth, its aesthetic taste, its literature, its changing currents of 
 opinion, its political movements, its thought, its culture — to 
 imbue them, as far as it may, with a Christian spirit, and to 
 guide them to high and noble ends. A national Church is, or 
 ought to be, and none but a national Church can be, the 
 spiritual leaven of the nation. 
 
 In the Church's contributions to literature, and in the general 
 intelligence and culture of the clergy, the period under review 
 will contrast not unfavourably with any past time. 
 
 Such changes as have taken place in the current of opinion 
 and teaching have been in the direction of a gentler theology, 
 
370 "Sy Gilei Lectures. 
 
 more in keeping with the softened manners of a milder time. 
 Far more than in former times is the love of God in Christ the 
 great theme of the pulpit, and far less the terrors of the law ; far 
 more the Fatherhood, and far less the Magistracy of God. It 
 is a question whether this milder form of teaching is not carried 
 to excess. A freer but not less reverential handling of the Word 
 of God ; a wider latitude of opinion, not as to the fact, but as 
 to the modus operandi of the Atonement ; a less stern and rigid 
 view of Sabbath obligation and observance ; a more merciful 
 and hopeful view of the future destiny, not only of the millions 
 outside the Christian Church, but of mankind in general — these 
 are changes which have come more or less over all churches 
 alike. There are two main directions in which the tide seems 
 strongly running 3 one is towards a relaxed subscription of the 
 Confession of Faith, the creed of Presbyterians throughout the 
 world, and, all in all, perhaps the noblest creed of Christendom. 
 The consensus of opinion is clearly towards the maintenance of 
 the Confession intact, as too valuable and too venerable to be 
 safely tampered with. That some latitude of interpretation is 
 allowable seems evident from the very nature of the document 
 itself, and from the circumstance that when it was approved by 
 the Assembly of 1647, it was expressly on the ground that it 
 was 'in nothing contrary to the received doctrine, &c., of this 
 Kirk' — that received doctrine being the old Scots Confession of 
 1560, 'which has never been repealed, modified, or departed 
 from.' If it was expressly allowable to the men of 1647 to treat 
 the new Confession in the light of the old, the same liberty 
 seems allowable to the men of 188 1, All that the statute of 
 1693 requires in the matter of subscription is, that the sub- 
 scriber accept it as 'the confession of his faith.' Whatever 
 additional stringency has been added to these terms, has been 
 the work of the Assembly; and what the Assembly has done, it 
 can also undo.^ 
 
 ^ See this whole subject powerfully handled in the paper on Disestablish- 
 ment, by the Duke of Argyll. Strahan & Co., London. 
 
The Church of the Present Day. 371 
 
 In looking back over these five-and-twenty years, nothing 
 strikes me more than the marked change which has taken place 
 for the better in pubhc worship, and especially in the matter and 
 manner of public prayer. Few things more nearly affect the 
 welfare of a Church than that form of worship by which it gives 
 expression to its faith in, its dependence on, and its communion 
 with God ; and few things have done our own Church more 
 harm than its long and slovenly neglect of this important 
 department of its work, and its departure in this respect from 
 its earlier and better ways. Among the historical facts which it 
 is neither to our credit nor to our welfare to forget, one is, that 
 for the first hundred years of its existence the Reformed Church 
 of Scotland had a richer and more varied service than it has 
 ever had since. It had its Prayer-book, its order for the 
 administration of the sacraments, its service of praise with 
 Hymns as well as Psalms and appropriate tunes. The loss of 
 all this was due not to Scottish, but to English influence. As 
 time advances and taste improves, there is a growing tendency 
 to return to the moderate and enlightened views of Knox and 
 the early Reformers. The Assembly has sanctioned the use of 
 the Prose Psalter, a Hymnal, and an Anthem book. Instru- 
 mental music is being widely introduced as a help to psalmody. 
 Church architecture has been immensely improved throughout 
 Scotland. Fast-days are going ; and it is not unlikely that in the 
 course of time their place will be taken by the days com- 
 memorative of those great facts and events which secured the 
 redemption of the world. While the privilege of extempore 
 prayer will never be abandoned in Scotland, there are good 
 men in all the churches, and these the very men who have 
 the "highest conception of what public prayer is, who would 
 be thankful for the use of a modified and permissive Liturgy, 
 as a blessing to themselves, and some security for a more 
 reverent and decorous worship over the length and breadth of 
 the land. 
 
 The story which has now been brought to a close is one of 
 
372 Sf Gile£ Lectures. 
 
 which every Scotchman may well be proud. If we leave out 
 Palestine and Greece, no country of equal size has played a 
 more prominent and beneficial part in human affairs than our 
 own. In theology, in philosophy, in literature, in science, in 
 jurisprudence, in government, in art, in mechanical invention, 
 in war, in every element that tends to human progress, her 
 children have taken and are taking a foremost place. Though 
 her skies are cold, her soil poor, her advantages in comparison 
 with other countries very small, history will never forget what 
 Scotland has done. In the measure in which we are proud 
 of our country we must be proud of our Church, for until a 
 recent period the country and the Church were one. 
 
 One question remains : What is to be the future of the 
 Church whose present condition and past fortunes have now 
 been traced ? Is she to be preserved and strengthened with a 
 view to continued and increasing usefulness, or is she to be 
 uprooted as the National Church ? AVe have seen that the 
 three main inheritances which the past has handed down 
 to the present, and of which the National Church is the 
 sacred depositary and guardian, are evangelical doctrine, 
 Presbyterian polity, and legal establishment and endowment. 
 The first of these was restored at and secured by the 
 Reformation ; the second was permanently secured by the 
 Revolution Settlement ; the third has been the unbroken 
 possession of the Church from the beginning. There was 
 a time when her doctrine was not evangelical. There was 
 a time when her polity was not Presbyterian. There never 
 was a time when she was severed from the State. Wars 
 have raged around her doctrine ; wars have raged around 
 her polity ; but until recent times there has been no war 
 about that State connection, which is the strong security 
 for both. No account of the Church of Scotland would 
 be historically just which left out of view the most remark- 
 able feature of modern ecclesiastical life. 
 
 Seriously viewed in all its lights and bearings, there is 
 
The Church of the Present Day. 373 
 
 perhaps no more melancholy chapter in the long and 
 chequered history of the Scottish Church than that which 
 is now in the process of being written. In none of all the 
 struggles which have been under review would it be so 
 difficult to detect any trace of moral grandeur, of genuine 
 nobility, of far-sighted patriotism, as in that agitation for the 
 destruction of the National Church which has already begun. 
 This ancient and stately edifice, whose history has been traced 
 in these lectures, which was built by the pious wisdom and 
 hallowed by the blood of our forefathers, within whose friendly 
 shelter was reared and fostered all that has made Scotland great 
 and free, the Scottish people of to-day are asked to destroy. 
 Before they lend themselves to this unhallowed work, there are 
 several questions which they would do well to consider. 
 
 I. What is the work which they are asked to do? It is 
 simply the destruction of the Church of Scotland, the oldest, 
 the greatest, and the best of all our national institutions, which, 
 once swept away, can never be restored. No cloud of soft 
 words should be allowed to obscure the real issue. Her 
 connection with the State, as the expression of national reli- 
 gion, is the very thing which, next to her doctrine and 
 her polity, and to her allegiance to her spiritual Head and 
 King, is her glory, her strength, and her joy. It is one 
 of the three strong links which bind the Church of to-day 
 to the Church of the remotest past. To sever that long- 
 continued connection, so fruitful in blessing to Church and 
 State alike, is to lay her in ruins. She would still be a Church 
 of Christ, but she would no longer be the Church of Scotland. 
 Our country would have one sect more, but no longer a 
 national religion nor a national Church ; and as nowhere 
 has the relation between Church and State — those two divine 
 ordinances for human good — been closer than in Scotland, so 
 nowhere has the influence of their interaction told more upon 
 the habits of the people and the history of the land. The 
 continuity of our national life would be broken by their 
 
374 "S"/ Giles' Lectures. 
 
 severance, and a religious, social, and political revolution 
 accomplished — the greatest that has taken place since the 
 Reformation. Lord Moncreiff, whose family holds a high place 
 in Scottish ecclesiastical history, and who is himself the most 
 eminent of living Free Churchmen, has said that this would be 
 to 'undo the work of three hundred years.' It would be the 
 greatest possible impulse which could be given to the revolu- 
 tionary tendencies of the times, to the levelling and commun- 
 istic spirit which is in the air. There are not a few who 
 think that if the oldest and best of our institutions goes, there 
 will not be much left that is worth the keeping. ' For it 
 must not be forgotten,' he further says, ' that changes of this 
 nature are seldom confined in their operation to the object 
 for which they were effected, but frequently find their main 
 development in results the most unexpected, and sometimes 
 in those which are least desired. It is impossible to root out 
 an old tree without disturbing the soil round it ; and the 
 abolition of the Established Church would bring with it many 
 results, religious, public, and social, extending far beyond 
 our subjects of controversy.' The Confession of Faith would 
 no longer be the law of the land. One of the most solemn 
 and binding articles in the Treaty of Union would be erased 
 from the statute-book. The first oath of the sovereign on 
 accession to the throne would no longer be to uphold the 
 Church of Scotland. With the solitary exception of our law- 
 courts, not one vestige of our ancient institutions would be left 
 to remind our children of the day when we were a separate 
 people. When these law-courts shall have been transferred to 
 Westminster, Edinburgh will be a second-rate provincial city, 
 and Scotland a mere appanage of England. As England was a 
 party to the Treaty of Union as well as Scotland, England must 
 be a party as well as Scotland to any interference or tampering 
 with it. It is a question on which more than a few Scotch- 
 men, and more than a political party, are entitled to be heard ; it 
 is one in which the whole nation is concerned. The aims of 
 
The Chu7-ch of the Present Day. 375 
 
 the Liberationists are well known. To them the humble and 
 inoffensive Church of Scotland is a matter of little concern. 
 But they know that as the principle which underlies the Estab- 
 lishment north of the Tweed is the principle which underlies 
 the Establishment south of the Tweed, the destruction of the 
 one would greatly hasten the destruction of the other. And 
 what would then follow ? There would follow of logical neces- 
 sity the repeal of the laws fencing the Protestant succession to 
 the throne ; the repeal of the laws for Sabbath observance ; the 
 repeal of the laws against blasphemy ; the repeal of every law 
 on our statute-book which has been the outcome of a national 
 recognition of God and of His laws. For the nation having 
 disestablished its churches, and thereby ceased as a nation to 
 recognise religion, every law founded on religious considera- 
 tions would be a tyrannical oppression and persecution of 
 those who do not believe in God and who refuse to recognise 
 His laws. To all this, every one in either country to whom 
 national religion is dear will have a word to say. 
 
 In Scotland, too, along with State connection, the ancient 
 parochial system would come to an end, and with it the spiritual 
 provision of the Scottish people, and especially of the poor. 
 Every parish throughout the land would be deprived of a 
 property that has belonged to it since parishes were made; a 
 property held by the very oldest and most sacred of tenures, 
 and designed to secure to it for ever the free administration 
 of the ordinances of religion. The tens of thousands of our 
 Scottish poor who can raise no voice loud enough to be heard 
 amid the din of ecclesiastical and political war, would see in 
 silent sorrow their religious patrimony wrested from them. 
 With such facts before us as this, that, out of the 1032 charges 
 of the Free Church in 1878, only 320 are self-supporting — 
 'that is, yield ^iS7 each to the common stipend fund' — it is 
 idle to suppose that any system at all approaching the parochial 
 system will ever be devised and successfully carried out for 
 securing the ministry of educated Christian gentlemen, and 
 
376 Sf ales' Lectures. 
 
 the free and faithful preaching of the Gospel over the length 
 and the breadth of the land. If the mass of the Scottish 
 people should ever consent to such a work of revolution and 
 spoliation, they will belie their whole history. One thing is 
 certain : no such upheaval of the social fabric as this can be 
 accomplished without fierce and bitter ecclesiastical war, and 
 the heart-burning, the dissension, the misery, and the serious 
 injury to spiritual life which such wars always entail. A whole 
 generation would bear upon its breast the scars of the strife. 
 
 2. What, I ask, is the time which has been chosen for this un- 
 holy war — for this destruction of the Church, this alienation of 
 religious property? In spite of the Church's great success, in 
 spite of the good work that is being done by other denomina- 
 tions, look at what still remains to do. Is there not work and 
 room and need for all ? There are 500,000 Scotchmen out- 
 side all Church influence. Our intemperance and impurity as 
 a people are scandalously high. Over-churching in some dis- 
 tricts, and under-churching in others, prevail to a lamentable 
 extent. The Romish Church is making progress. It has 
 restored its Hierarchy. Since 1851 it has increased its priest- 
 hood in England and Scotland from 958 to 2282 ; its churches, 
 from 683 to 1461 ; its monasteries, from 17 to 160. In 185 1 
 there was not one monastery in Scotland; there are 15 now. 
 It has already accomplished that supposed impossible feat of 
 directly, and through no intermediate steps, drawing to its 
 bosom members of our Presbyterian Church, both high and 
 humble born. There is an Irish Roman Catholic popula- 
 tion seething in the centres of our large towns, as much 
 cut off from all elevating wholesome Christian influence as 
 if they were in the wilds of Connemara, and by God's law 
 of influence dragging our people down to their level because 
 we have not lifted them up to ours. There are much 
 worse things than Romanism making progress among us. 
 Rationalism of the worst kind is poisoning to an inconceivable 
 extent large masses of our intelligent artisans. The last five- 
 
The Church of the Present Day. 377 
 
 and-twenty years have been in some respects the most fateful 
 which the Church of Christ has yet seen. Never since 
 Christianity began has there been a period of equal extent 
 equally prolific in free speculations on religious subjects and 
 in questionings of those fundamental truths on which religion 
 rests. The remarkable thing is the vast area of intelligence 
 which, through means of the periodical press, these speculations 
 reach and influence. It is a time of general upheaval, 
 doubt, and drift. The Bible is subjected to a rationalistic 
 treatment which leaves it an empty and worthless shell, whose 
 ultimate and not very distant destiny is declared to be the 
 shelves of some antiquarian museum. All creeds and all 
 churches are on their trial. In a day like this, when some of 
 the most powerful forces at work in society are not only hostile, 
 but fiercely hostile to all churches alike, and to those dear and 
 blessed interests which they represent ; when men of high 
 culture and learning are calling upon those like-minded with 
 themselves to apply the axe to the very roots of Christianity, 
 and to tear it up as a pestilent and accursed thing ; when 
 some of the leaders of public opinion, whose words are 
 heard to the ends of the world, live and die acknowledged 
 atheists ; when the highest science of the time is growing more 
 avowedly materialistic; when the authority of Scripture, the 
 Divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul, are day by day 
 more widely denied ; when between the aggressive eff'orts of 
 Romanism on the one hand, and Rationalism on the other, it 
 would almost seem as if the Reformation-force had spent itself, 
 and the tide were on the turn ; when some of the ablest 
 and most pious minds in Christendom are seeing in all this 
 ' that downward sweep into religious doubt which is only the 
 long-predicted and mystic harbinger of the beginning of the 
 end ' — in a day like this, it is treachery to their Master and 
 suicidal faithlessness to themselves for the churches in Scotland, 
 so closely akin to one another, to enter on a war that might 
 easily be avoided, and to waste in fighting about Church 
 
378 Sf Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 arrangements those energies which are more than needed to 
 repel the common enemy — the enemy of God and of the best 
 interests of men — who is thundering at all their doors. 
 
 3. Who are they who at such a time are summoning the 
 people to such a work, and seeking to spread over a peaceful 
 land the horrors of a fierce and unnatural war? 
 
 The agitation is more of English than of Scottish origin. It 
 is stirred and sustained by the Liberation Society, who supply 
 the sinews of war, and who seek to strike through the Scottish, 
 a blow at the English Establishment. Measured by that 
 delicate and accurate gauge of a Scotchman's feelings and con- 
 victions — the amount of his contributions — the agitation has a 
 very slender hold on him indeed. So far as Scotland is con- 
 cerned, it is mainly clerical. As the Free Church General 
 Assembly is largely clerical in tone, its sweeping majorities in 
 favour of Disestablishment are very far indeed from being 
 a certain indication of the convictions of the great body of 
 her people, who do not forget that the principle of Establish- 
 ment is ineradicably rooted in her own constitution, and 
 that, in 1843, she went forth with the banner flying over 
 her, 'We are no Voluntaries.' With regard to the state of 
 matters at the parliamentary polls, it is enough to say that 
 the question has not yet been generally regarded as coming 
 within the range of practical politics, and that Liberal Church- 
 men have not abandoned their party on account of a danger 
 which they do not seriously apprehend. Disestablishment 
 meetings have not been remarkable either for number, or influ- 
 ence, or enthusiasm. To the mass of the intelligent laity in all 
 our churches, the agitation is simply distasteful and distressing. 
 They see that the points which divide are trifles in comparison 
 with the points which unite, and they are weary and sick of 
 ecclesiastical strife. On 31st March last, it was said by Lord 
 Provost Ure of Glasgow, himself a United Presbyterian : 
 ' There is no one who can look back on the history of the 
 country for three hundred years, who would think for a moment 
 
TJie Church of the Present Day. 379 
 
 of blotting out the Established Church of Scotland ; without it, 
 our country would be in nothing better than a state of barbarism. 
 There cannot be the slightest doubt, that without the Church of 
 Scotland, we would not be the people that we are. I, for one, 
 feel the greatest gratitude to that Church, that it has done what 
 it has for the country to which we belong.' 
 
 4. Why to such a work, at such a time, and by such men, 
 are the people summoned ? 
 
 It may well be asked of the Institution which it is sought to 
 destroy — why, what evil hath it done ? It occupies to-day no 
 other position" than it has always occupied ; it holds no other 
 principles than it has always held. Does it bear upon its fore- 
 head the manifest tokens of a Church doomed to, because 
 deserving destruction? What are the reasons on which rests 
 the enormous conclusion that this ancient historic Church 
 should cease to be ? It has been asserted that the con- 
 nection between Church and State is unscriptural, and sinful, 
 and injurious to religion and morality. It must be a poor 
 cause which could use such weapons. One remark may 
 suffice. Whatever is unscriptural and sinful now, must always 
 have been so : therefore, the Church of Scotland and the 
 Church of England, back to the Reformation, have been 
 unscriptural and sinful ; and Knox, and Melville, and 
 Chalmers, all alike fall under this dreadful appellative. 
 
 There is one argument against the National Church as being 
 established and endowed, which is worth looking at. It is 
 this, that it gives the Church an unfair advantage over 
 Nonconformists, and is therefore so far unjust. It contradicts, 
 it is said, the principle of religious equality. This is an 
 argument which is capable of being presented in a very 
 plausible form, and which would not be without some 
 force if the case stood thus — that out of a number of widely 
 different sects competing for the popular favour, the State 
 chose at the present day, and for the first twie, not to 
 endow — for that it does not — but to select one, and to 
 
380 Sf Gives' Lee fu res. 
 
 recognise it as the National Church. That might, with 
 some show of reason, be called a violation of religious 
 equality. But the case is not so. The Church is not a sect 
 now entering into competition with other sects. The root idea 
 of it is, that it is a national institution as old as the State 
 itself, and therefore going back to a time long before sects had 
 any existence, employing its own resources to the best of its 
 ability for the very highest national purposes, and offering its 
 benefits equally to all. It is the friend and the ally, not the 
 creature nor the pensioner of the State. It would be as true 
 to say that it made the State as to say that the State made it. 
 It costs the State nothing. The small portion of its endowments 
 which the State pays in grants from the Exchequer, is only part 
 of what it receives from Church property in the form of Bishops' 
 rents. So far as there are pecuniary transactions between them, 
 it is the State, not the Church, which is the gainer. The 
 Church is simply the owner, or if you will, the trustee of a 
 fragment of a much larger property conferred upon it by private 
 voluntary gift in times far remote, and since then faithfully 
 employed for the maintenance of religion throughout the land. 
 To say anything else, is to say what is not true. Unlike the Irish 
 Church — of whose destruction this at least can be said, that 
 it has not made Ireland any better — it is no mark of conquest, 
 no symbol of external force or dictation, no privileged Church 
 of an alien race, no State-paid propagator of an alien 
 faith. In its doctrine, in its discipline, in its government, 
 it represents the religious convictions of eighty-two per cent, 
 of the Scottish people. Unlike the Church of England, it 
 does not overwhelm by its bulk those who difter from 
 it. Its superiority does not amount to an offence. It is 
 not the author of a social ostracism. It creates no social 
 chasm between its own people and Dissenters. They visit 
 freely in each other's houses. They pass with ease from one 
 Church to another. The social strata from which its clergy 
 and those of the Dissenting Churches are drawn, do not lie far 
 
TJie Church of the Present Day. 381 
 
 apart. They study at the same universities ; they preach in 
 each other's pulpits. The Church hurts no one ; it tyrannises 
 over no one ; it speaks ill of no one ; it is willing to associate 
 with all. Its doors and its heart are open to all. Whatever 
 its privileges and its poor endowments, all are welcome to 
 share them who will, and this because it has ever been the 
 Church, not of a sect, but of the nation. 
 
 Where is the religious inequality here ? Even if there were, 
 it is not the Church that would be responsible, for it 
 stands precisely where it always stood, but those who chose 
 to leave it, and who are welcome to return. It is not fair for 
 those, who of their own free will refuse to take the benefits of 
 an ancient institution, to turn round and say that they are 
 unfairly treated, because others choose to take and enjoy what 
 their fathers handed down to them, but which they choose to 
 decline. Because they have become Voluntaries by choice, is 
 it fair that they should try to make others Voluntary by 
 compulsion ? 
 
 One other specious argument is used. After the war, it is said, 
 the combatants will embrace. On the ruins of the Establishment 
 a great United Presbyterian Church will rise. It is difficult to 
 believe that there are men who seriously believe that. They 
 little know how dear the Church of Scotland is to her clergy 
 and her people who could dream this foolish dream. Disestab- 
 lishment would be the greatest blow ever struck not only at 
 Presbyterian Union, but, so far as Scotland is concerned, at 
 Presbyterianism itself. There is no barrier to hearty fellow- 
 ship between the clergy and the churches now ; there would be an 
 insuperable obstacle then. Among the few things certain in such 
 an event, one at least is this, that the best of her people and 
 the best of her clergy would never unite with those who cause- 
 lessly inflicted what they would regard as one of the greatest 
 calamities which ever befell the Scottish people. That were a 
 wrong whose memory would live on for many a generation. 
 
 5. Who will be the gainers by the strife, end how it may ? 
 
382 Si Giles^ Lectures. 
 
 Who will be the gainers, especially if it end in the accomplish- 
 ment of its destructive aims ? Not the poor, whose spiritual 
 provision will have gone. Not the two Churches, the principal 
 Scottish agents in the work. There will be no addition to 
 their numbers, nor to the social status of their clergy, nor to 
 their income, their influence, and their prestige ; and certainly 
 none to the existing Church of Scotland, which values a 
 national recognition of religion expressed by State connection 
 as a good thing for it, a better thing for the poor, and the 
 best thing of all for the land we live in. To some extent, 
 perhaps to a large extent, Scottish Episcopacy will gain, within 
 Avhose more peaceful fold many good men are even now seeking 
 shelter from the strife of Presbyterian tongues. Religious 
 intolerance and bigotry will gain. The day was when Scotland 
 was not a pleasant place to live in ; that day may come again. 
 Secularism and infidelity will gain, for they have no better 
 recruiting-sergeants than ecclesiastical wars. Revolutionary 
 principles will gain. The disestablishment of the Church will 
 be one long stride towards the rule of democracy, the abolition 
 of Protestant sovereigns, and the disestablishment of the 
 throne. 
 
 6. There is one last question : Supposing Disestablishment, 
 what then ? What is the programme ? What is the new and 
 superior system which is to take the place of the old? Is 
 the new order of things to be shaped by chaos or by chance ? 
 Where is the new Knox who is to guide the new Reformation 
 towards far nobler issues than the old? Let Lord Moncreiff 
 reply : ' The adjustment of the new order of things would 
 not be wholly or mainly in Presbyterian hands ; and it were 
 difficult to predict what kind of fabric might or might not arise 
 on the ruins of our Revolution Settlement and the Treaty of 
 Union.' If this, or anything like this, is a true representation 
 of the facts of the case, there never was in the whole course 
 of ecclesiastical history a more wanton, reckless, and suicidal 
 work of destruction to which a Christian people were asked to 
 
The Church of the Present Day. 383 
 
 set themselves, than the proposed abolition of the National 
 Church of our land. 
 
 There is one conclusion to be drawn from all that has gone 
 before in this and the preceding lectures — namely, that if ever 
 there was an ancient institution which was worth preserving for 
 what it has done, for what it is doing, for what it has the 
 promise of being yet able to do, it is that institution 'which 
 alone bears on its front, without note or comment, the title 
 of the Church of Scotland.' It is the fullest embodiment of 
 the traditions of the past ; it is the fullest expression of the 
 thought and life of the present ; it has by far the richest promise 
 of the future. It is the common heritage of Scotchmen. 
 
 It is worth preserving, because its friendly compact with the 
 State is, in the conditions of modern society, the only substantial 
 and the only possible security for spiritual independence.^ 
 
 It is worth preserving, because it provides the best security, 
 especially in a Presbyterian Church, for a cultured, free, and 
 independent clergy. 
 
 It is worth preserving as a solid guarantee for the continued 
 purity of the national faith, and for the prevalence throughout 
 the land of a religion that will neither be latitudinarian on the 
 one hand, nor narrow, fanatical, or intolerant on the other. 
 
 ^ Such a case as that of Jones v. Stannard, which was tried in the Chan- 
 cery Division of the High Court of Justice, and which lasted seven days, as 
 reported in the Times, Feb. 2, 1S81, puts beyond dispute the following points : 
 (i) That all Dissenting Churches are subject to the jurisdiction of the civil 
 courts. (2) That the creed of any non-established Church may be con- 
 sidered, and its true interpretation decided, by the civil court. (3) That the 
 civil court may decide questions involving the removal of a minister of a 
 Dissenting Church from his pastoral charge on the ground of doctrine. 
 (4) That no human foresight or skill can prevent the recurrence in Dissent- 
 ing Churches of similar questions with similar issues. (5) That absolute 
 spiritual independence cannot be secured in a Dissenting Church. As the 
 decision of all such cases in the supreme court of the Church of Scotland 
 is final, with no appeal to the civil courts, which are precluded by statute 
 from reviewing its decisions, all who value spiritual independence are logi- 
 cally and morally bound to oppose the abolition of that Church. 
 
384 Sf Gibes' Lectures. 
 
 It is worth preserving as the only security that the rehgious 
 wants of the nation shall be provided for in the generations 
 to come. 
 
 It is worth preserving as the only visible rallying point of our 
 distracted Presbyterianism. 
 
 It is worth preserving as the nation's testimony to its faith 
 in Almighty God, and in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 The State is not a fortuitous concourse of men and women, 
 but a living and organic whole, with functions, privileges, and 
 obligations. In a sense different from that which applies to 
 the separate individuals who compose it, it is the subject of 
 the providential government ; it is accountable to God ; it is 
 by Him rewarded and punished. In its organic and corporate 
 life this State is Christian. That is its very highest character- 
 istic. Its people, its structure, its laws, customs, and institu- 
 tions are Christian. To the prevalence of Christian principles 
 and ways of living, it owes its commanding place among the 
 nations of the world. It is the duty of a State thus organically 
 constituted, ' through the only channels open to it, its legislature 
 and its laws,' to honour Christ, to acknowledge the source 
 whence national blessings flow, and to support and advance 
 to the utmost of its power that divine religion which is the 
 principal factor of its greatness and strength. For hundreds 
 of years the Church of Scotland has been the authoritative 
 expression of the fact, that the State and the Constitution are 
 Christian, Long may it continue so ; for no truth stands out 
 with sharper distinctness upon the page of history — no truth 
 is written in deeper lines across the times we live in than this 
 truth : ' The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee, shall 
 perish.' . . . ' Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.' 
 
 -^ _ THE END. 
 
 Edinburgh : Printed by W. & R. Chambers.